


A Dog Hair in the Weave of the Wool

by freezefawn



Category: Breaking Bad
Genre: Ableism, Alternate Universe, Cancer, Childhood Sexual Abuse, Drugs, Gen, Physical Abuse, Self-Harm, Suicidal Thoughts, complex PTSD
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-05
Updated: 2015-12-21
Packaged: 2018-05-05 02:24:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 3
Words: 22,864
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5357399
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/freezefawn/pseuds/freezefawn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Walter White is diagnosed with cancer, but he doesn't cook meth.  Instead, he loses his shit, and acts like a person.  </p><p>Jesse Pinkman isn't sure if he's a person, but he's trying his best.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

_Ovid stole my clothes_

_The thread that's mine, the thread that knows_

_Can you feel or taste this?_

_A molecule in stasis_

([Ruby Throat](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhAMG2qFhio))

 

It’s the second day of school—the first day for me—and I can tell you right now, this year is gonna _blow_.

Senioritis always seemed like a bullshit concept to me.  I’ve been checked out practically since kindergarten. It gets harder, though, the longer it goes on. You get exhausted, lose your morale. And when you were a senior already, when last year should have been it but you’re still stuck—it does start to feel like a disease. Like the chronic kind.

The great thing about getting held back is you end up with a full hand of shit you already failed. It’s not a real hopeful way to start a year. It’s not so bad if you get a different teacher, but I haven’t been so lucky. My two worst subjects, algebra and chemistry, are both with the same assholes from last year. And they both hate me.

Mrs. Livengood is the cute little grandma from hell. She’s got this little dollop of see-through grandma hair, these little round grandma glasses… makes you think she’s totally innocent, but she’s actually, basically Satan. I am not that good at math. And I’m not saying I put, like, my best foot forward, necessarily. But her teaching was beyond comprehension and I know I’m not the only one who failed.  I think I got like a 23 on the first test. I gave up fast after that, and I don’t have a lot of optimism for this round, either.

Mr. White’s class is the biggest drag of all, though. At least Livengood seems to have forgotten who I am; I guess after about a hundred years’ worth of students they all kinda blur together. There’s no clean slate with this guy, though, and he was a hardass to begin with. I’ve got him sixth period and by now I’m so tired, _so_ not in the mood. He gives me that little beady-eyed look of judgment all the way to my seat, and I just want to turn around and walk back out.

When he takes attendance, he can’t content himself with the fucked up ironic inflection he puts on my name, either. He just _has_ to throw in a comment about me skipping yesterday. _We’re honored you could join us, Mr. Pinkman._ Wow, real funny, not to mention totally mature and professional. Anyway, it’s not like I actually missed anything yesterday. I already heard his gay-ass speech. But I really need to pass this time, so I don’t say anything, even though I want to. Instead I set about arranging my stuff on the desk, turn my notebook to a nice clean page. Totally prepared.

Apparently the gig for today is History of the Periodic Table, Take 2. I try not to zone out, since I clearly did on Take 1—I don’t remember any of this. I really try, but the words all mash together in my head. I get distracted by the guy texting in front of me, by a flash of color in the corner of my eye when a screensaver morphs. I watch it for like ten seconds before I remember what I’m supposed to be doing. And then I’m lost, no clue which crusty old science dude Mr. White’s on about now. Why he won’t use fucking Powerpoint like a normal teacher? Everything always has to be as difficult as can be. Then next thing you know, he’s insisting he _cares_ , trying to analyze you, fitting you into some little philosophical box of his.

I can feel this sense of doom settling down on me, crowding out the will to get my shit together. For Ginny—so she won’t keep worrying about what’ll happen to me. So she isn’t worrying about it when she dies, miserably, from goddamn fucking cancer. Leaving me without a single adult in my life who thinks I’m worth jack. Now I’ve given up on the lecture because it’s taking everything not to cry in the middle of class. I blink hard, breathing carefully in and out through my mouth. I start drawing so it looks like I’m taking notes; I can’t deal with getting called out right now. I draw a three-dimensional box and shade it, imagining the light source like in Ms. Anderson’s class. Then I draw another box, more rectangular this time. I keep drawing little boxes until the bell rings, and I don’t cry.

“Be sure to have the first chapter read by tomorrow!” Mr. White’s saying. “Practice problems for sections 1-3 will be due Thursday—get started early.”

I start shoving shit into my backpack, cursing under my breath. Apparently everybody else packed their shit all preemptive-like, even though Mr. White hates that, and they’re all trampling each other trying to leave. Just as I’m hefting my half-zipped bag, I hear my name called – Fucking Christ. Mr. White blocks my way to the door.

“Just a moment, Mr. Pinkman.”

I look down at the book he just put in my hands. Oh. I wasn’t here when he passed out the books.  Actually, I think I might still have my copy from last year.  It's probably buried in trash in my car.

“Oh. Thanks,” I make to leave, but he holds up a hand, not done yet. I don’t say anything but I’m sure my harassed, dread-filled face speaks for me.

“Your mother has… communicated with me. She assures me your _personal difficulties_ are being addressed, and you’re planning to take your education seriously.”

He pauses, waiting for a response. My dread curls into fists.

 _Fuck you, you gross old creep._ “Uh, yeah. I mean, yes sir.”

“I’m glad to hear it. Just remember—if you want to succeed, particularly in areas that are challenging for you, you have to be proactive. Keep up with the reading and the homework, ask questions in class, and come to tutoring Wednesdays if you need to. There’s no easy alternative to showing up, and learning the material.”

I have literally heard this lecture dozens of times, and I want to hit something, but I dutifully respond, “Yes, sir. I understand.”

“I hope you do. But I need to make it clear there will be no last-minute makeups, no special extra credit opportunities just for you. Is that clear?”

I grit out, “Crystal,” and flee, barreling down the hall as fast as my feet will carry me.

I’ve got gym last period but I opt for hiding out in the bathroom instead. Fuck gym—fuck locker rooms, and physical exertion, and getting yelled at. I feel like my insides are screaming, or maybe on fire. Maybe beating on the walls to try and get out. My hands are shaking and I just can’t—today has been too damn much already. What I need is a joint but I don’t dare light up in here after two consecutive incidents. Both ending in suspension. I think about taking more Adderall but I might just freak out more. I should hit up Emilio and see if he’s got any Xanax or something like that. I don’t know why I’m such a mess but there’s no way I’ll graduate if I can’t get it dealt with, fast.

Summer was good, best one in a while. I started staying with Ginny when I got out of the clinic; she’s gotten so sick, she really needs someone to help her full time. Her friend’s around a lot but she’s got a job and a kid to look after so there’s only so much she can do. And now I’ve got my license, I can take her to appointments and stuff, run errands, whatever. It feels great to be there for her, even though it’s hard to see her like this, debilitated, frustrated when she can’t do stuff on her own. We spent a lot of time together this summer, watching movies, playing Uno and shit. She’s cool with weed and once I even smoked with her and Allison, which was weird but alright.

Now that I’m here, though, it’s like all the shit that landed me in the clinic is coming back, like I was just pretending. I feel trapped and cornered, trying to make my brain work when it’s shutting down. I just wanna drop out so bad, and most of me thinks I’m already doomed to. But then I think about Ginny’s face, and the medical bills that never seem to end. She said, once, that she wants me to have the house, she’ll rest easy knowing I’ll always have someplace to live. I hate to hear her talk like that but I have no choice, anymore, but to think about this stuff. The house is more than I could ever have asked for, but someone’ll have to pay the bills. Ginny’s life insurance money is going fast down the cancer hole, and there won’t be anything left when she’s gone. As for the rest of the family—nothing comes without a price.

In the end I huddle on the john for an hour. My freaky mood makes me reach into my sleeves and scratch up and down, up and down my arms. They’ll be red and raw but at least it scrapes off some of the tension. About twenty minutes in, I have to listen to this guy’s really graphic shit, and then he starts graphically eating while shitting. It’s disgusting but also momentarily entertaining. After he leaves all I can do is like, memorize the graffiti.

When the bell finally rings, I make a beeline for my car. She’s no great beauty, but she’s my most treasured belonging, a present from Ginny. She’s what freedom looks like. As soon as I’m inside I fumble around for my cigarettes, which turn up on the floor underneath a pair of jeans. The car’s a dump since I sorta live out of it, still. I get a cig lit and I’m out of this lot like a bat outta hell. I roll all the windows down, crank up the stereo. I laugh as the wind throws my hair and clothes around, sends burning ash into my lap. I can breathe for the first time today.

I drive around town for a while, coasting. I empty my mind—just for a minute—of the gas I’m wasting, and where I’m supposed to be—of graduation, and family, and death. Just for a minute, there’s nothing but wind and smoke and music. There’s just the sights and sounds and smells of ABQ, running in through the windows and out again, glowing neon as the sun sets.

***

“Where have you been?”

Ginny's in her chair, nestled in front of a muted Charmin bears commercial.

“Stayed after for help with algebra. I’m trying to, you know, be proactive and all. And I ran to the store,” I hold up the frozen pizza I scored, pushing the door shut with my foot. “Family size.”

I head into the kitchen, actually hungry, like the wind whipped up my appetite. I’m scanning the pizza box for cooking directions when Ginny calls after me.

“You could at least text, Jesse. I was worried,” She sounds genuinely upset, so I put the box down on the counter and go back in the living room to apologize.

“Sorry, Ginny. I didn’t mean to make you worry, I just forgot.”

I hate that she worried. Her face looks washed-out, old and exhausted and sick, even as it relaxes into a smile. The last thing she needs is more stress on her.

“I know, sweetheart, it’s alright. C’mere,” she forgives me, reaches for me. I sit on the arm of her chair so she can hug me. Her arms feel light, but her voice is heavy: “I’m just glad you’re not hurt.”

I scoff, “Of course I’m not hurt.”

I pull away gently, hurrying into the kitchen so she won’t see that I’m about to cry. I crouch next to the stove and shove my knuckles into my eyeballs. _Stop fucking crying. You little bitch—it’s every other minute with you._ I cough, trying to relieve the pressure in my chest, but it keeps on tightening the harder I gulp down my tears. I feel stupid and fucked up and crazy. I don’t even know why I’m upset.

I make myself straighten up and deal with the pizza, breathing in and out carefully like I learned in the clinic. Preheat the oven to 425 degrees (breathe in). Remove the plastic overwrap (breathe out). But the voice in my head won’t stop shouting, calling me crazy and stupid, demanding to know what’s wrong with me. _Always crying for attention, I’ll give you something to cry about._ I’m trying to breathe in and out and in and out, but the panic cuts through me. It strikes me still like an ice arrow, branching icicles through my body.

I’m crowded with screams— _stop it, stop it, stop it now_!—‘til I pop free, finally. I bounce off the ceiling, hover somewhere near my body but not quite in it. The room falls back into whatever-ness; thoughts surface like smooth little stones.

Pizza. It goes in the oven. When the red light comes on. For 12 to 15 minutes. I wait until the light comes on, I shove the pizza inside, and I set the timer.

Ginny is watching some crime show. The sound’s back on, and this lady is having a big emotional scene, crying and cringing and tugging on her hair. The detectives nod and look sympathetic. The lady detective reaches across the table, hand curling safely around the crying woman’s hand. Her gaze is steady: she’s gonna make it right.

“Hey, Jesse? Jesse, what’s wrong?” Aunt Ginny is looking at me with a terrible expression. It’s not sympathy, but pain. There’s a harsh furrow in the space between where her eyebrows used to be.

“Huh? Everything’s fine.”

“I’ve been asking how was school,” she says, and the crease isn’t smoothing out. I’m supposed to say something so it’ll smooth out.

I’m bad at this. Nobody at home ever notices when I’m like this. It hasn’t happened much lately, and never with Ginny.

“Oh. School was good.”

“Yeah? You’re feeling—okay about your classes so far?” It’s hard to hear her over the TV. Someone is shouting now. The dude detective—he’s got this righteous anger thing going on.

“Um, I think so, yeah. Algebra’s gonna be tough. And chemistry. I just gotta, you know, buckle down, or whatever.”

The crease deepens— _shit_. “You’re a smart kid, Jesse. And a good kid. You’ve had a hard time—you haven’t had enough chances to do your best.”

I don’t know what to say. Somewhere in all the ice, something painful splinters off.

“My sister—she loves you more than anything. You have to know that. But she—she’s got these ideas about how things are supposed to be. She doesn’t get that her way won’t work for everyone. That some people are different, need different things.”

The splinter embeds itself in my gut. I know what’s coming next.

“Jesse, she called today. We had a pretty long conversation. She’s—very concerned about you. She wants to know why you won’t go home.”

I can’t speak. I’ll start leaking—hot filthy blood that’s got to stay frozen solid, packed away where it won’t contaminate this.

Ginny goes on, “Won’t you please visit her? You don’t have to stay long—just dinner, or something. Jake asked for you. Look, you know I love having you around, I appreciate all your help—and I know you and your dad have had some problems—"

Beeping. Something’s beeping.

“Pizza,” I rasp out, scrambling to my feet and out of the room. I switch off the stove automatically, just remember to grab an oven mitt before I yank out the rack.

I breathe. Scoop the pizza onto a cutting board, dig around in the drawer for a decent knife. Painstakingly cut the pizza into eight identical slices, arrange them on two plates. Fill two glasses with ice and water. Put everything on a tray, along with some napkins. Carry the tray to the living room, when I can’t stall any longer.

Ginny thanks me for the food, but doesn’t say anything else. I sit down and start mechanically chewing pizza, though I’m not hungry at all, now. I keep eating just to avoid talking. I notice Ginny barely nibbling on a slice—she must be nauseous. I get a sudden urge to smash my head against something.

Instead I just focus on eating. Soon the pizza is nothing but a greasy knot in my gut. I wrap Jenny’s leftover slices up in plastic and stick our plates in the dishwasher before I say goodnight. Ginny’s mostly been sleeping down here, lately; the stairs take a lot out of her, plus the TV’s down here, and the downstairs bathroom is only a few feet away from her chair.

I don’t let myself think. I trudge up the stairs, half-assedly de-grease my mouth, and cop an Ambien from the bottle in the medicine cabinet. By the time I kick off my shoes, crawl into bed, and pass out, my mind is totally blank. But it doesn’t mean shit once I’m asleep.

***

I wake up with a silent scream, tumble out of bed and barely make it to the john before I spew. Round after round of nasty fucking half-digested freezer pizza, shaking and sweating so much I barely keep my grip on the toilet seat. I’m pissed. I was going to have those leftovers for lunch, but now I won’t be able to look at pizza, probably for a month.

Great knowing my life is so fucked up I can’t sleep normally. Can’t eat normally, can’t deal with school like a normal person, can’t get a fucking hug without having a breakdown.

I’m spitting into the sink when a knock on the door scares me out of my skin. I’m bolt upright, heart beating loud enough to hear, when I hear a soft, “Jesse?” coming from the other side. “You sick, honey?”

Ginny. It’s just Ginny, obviously. She must have heard me hurling and dragged herself up all those steps just to check on me. Guilt and relief make me tear up for the bazillionth time.

“’M fine,” I call hoarsely, “You didn’t have to come up. All that, uh, pizza, must not have agreed with me.”

It’s no good; she comes in anyway, murmuring, “You poor thing.”

I want to be reassuring but I don’t know how. I’m covered in sweat and tears and puke and my stupid heart is still going a hundred miles an hour. I want to cry in her arms. I want to tell her everything.

Her hand’s on my forehead, “You want some tea? How about a Haldol?”

“No, no, really,” I squeeze her hand and lower it, manage a shaky smile. “I feel way better now. Got it out of my system. I just wanna go back to bed.”

She pats my shoulder. “If you’re sure. Sleep well, Jesse.”

She shuts the door behind her with a soft click. I listen to her shuffle back downstairs, watching myself in the mirror as I start to cry silently. My face crumples like a cave-in, blotchy red-and-white, slick with sweat and snot. I blink away the tears, feeling sick again. I’m not the one who’s dying, but I look like a corpse right now. Rotten and wasted.

I already know I won’t sleep again.

**************************************

_(6 weeks later)_

This man has mustard on his tie.

The stain is so large, so alarmingly…mustard-colored… it boggles the mind how it escaped his notice.

Reality has shattered and remade itself. I know this already, but I can't make the pieces fit together. They struggle to reorient themselves, to prioritize and rationalize, to navigate the altered landscape. In the middle of this nightmare, all I want is to erase that stain.

Cancer. Inoperable.

The system maintains homeostasis. Even now—truly, it’s remarkable. My body is at this very moment mobilizing its resources to defend against the predator it’s assumed is the cause of the shock. My nervous system is on high alert, rapidly assessing my environment, responding automatically to every signal it encodes as danger: a blaring car horn, a sudden movement in the rear-view, a cell ringtone—my ringtone.

Skyler.

“…Hey.”

“Hey, yourself. I’m just trying to figure out dinner. Junior’s sleeping over tonight, so I’m thinking, maybe pizza?”

Pizza. “Ah—yes. Pizza, sounds just fine.”

“I’ll go on and order, then. How far off are you?”

“Should be…fifteen minutes, tops.”

“Alright then, see you soon. Love you.”

“…Love you.”

The problem is, for all its evolutionary achievement, my body has no idea what it’s up against. A saber-toothed cat—whatever beast it’s invented—has nothing on what’s happening in its own cells. The threat from within, killing me a little more with each tiny, innocent replication.

My name is Walter Hartwell White. I’m forty-three years old. I’m a husband and a father; a provider. I provide for my family.

Also, I have lung cancer. Stage 3A, inoperable.

All signs point to a ruinously expensive death, leaving nothing behind. A legacy of grief and hardship, a scrap of paper in a frame; a stolen fortune and a reeking, caustic, unbearable heap of pity.

The pieces don’t fit. But somehow, like the body, the mind recovers: rearranges pieces, tosses them out, creates anew. It’s more flexible, really, than it’s given credit for. It holds itself together until it can’t.

I’m home—sitting in the driveway, God knows for how long. I get out of the car and let myself into the house. Skyler greets me with the bottle of wine we’ve had sitting around for a week or two; she’s in a good mood, glad to have the night off. I pull up a smile, somehow intact, from the mess in my head. I pull up conversation, even jokes. I manage pizza, and an early bedtime.

Watching her read in bed, things might as well be normal. They very nearly feel that way.

***

Nothing is normal in the morning. I wake up to shouting (my own), Skyler blinking in sleepy alarm. I remember nothing of the dream but the terrifying sensation of being consumed. Swallowed, digested, and obliterated. Not a scrap left over—not even in memory.

It’s only four-thirty, but there’s no point in trying to sleep anymore. I get up, shower quickly, and get dressed. When I pass the bed, I hear Skyler mumble, “Everything okay?” But I can’t speak, so I pretend I didn’t hear her.

I go to the kitchen and make coffee. I don’t want coffee but I have to do something. Anything—unload the dishwasher, wipe down the counters, sort out the junk mail. Each task, when completed, is followed by a swell of panic.

It’s suddenly urgent that I leave before Skyler wakes up. I can’t talk to her now. I can’t hold it together; it will all come spilling out, and it can’t. Not yet.

I need to get some grading done anyway, and there’s nothing else for me to do here. I step out into the dawn. The sun, barely risen, casts the dewy lawn with a frail blue sheen. Reality looms, plausible and undeniable, in this eerie light.

The day is long and merciless. I hope that the predictable, tedious routine will absorb me, but a sense of alienation stays with me, fixing everything with a cruel edge. I’m not myself. I spend the day constantly irritated with the students, whose mediocrity and poor attitudes I long ago learned to accept. Today, I can’t patiently answer their questions; I can’t act like the adult I’m supposed to be. I look at them, row upon row of empty doll eyes, staring at me from interchangeable faces. How on Earth do I learn their names, year after year, when they are all exactly the same?

I make it through, though, somehow. I remind myself I’m not thinking clearly, not seeing clearly. I was sane yesterday, and I can be sane again—I have to be. I just have to keep behaving as though this world is the same one from before. No matter what, I have to keep it together. So I’m short with them, but I don’t scream, or throw things, or curl into a ball under my desk. I keep it together—at least until Jesse Pinkman.

One year with Pinkman should have been enough. The kid has this look in his eyes—it gets under my skin in a way student behavior shouldn’t. There’s a sly cleverness there, glinting underneath the blank stare. It’s hard to spot; most of the faculty have him pegged as a simple delinquent. Average in ability, but hindered by a lack of motivation and cooperation. I’ve seen it, though. The calculation behind his self-defeating, self-destructive behaviors. Potential squandered, not out of mere laziness, but as a deliberate performance—a sort of declaration of selfhood.

On the occasions Pinkman made it to class, he usually reeked of pot and cigarettes, all hopped up on whatever stimulants he favored. His condition was at times so obvious it created a serious distraction for the other students. If I called on him I’d get some flippant remark in response, followed by a round of titters from his classmates. He was never in a fit state when he showed up for the labs, and is responsible for the single-handed destruction of an astonishing quantity of glassware.

Worst of all, though, were the meetings with Pinkman’s mother, during which she invariably cried, and divulged more information than I ever wanted to know about her or her son. She attributed Pinkman’s poor academic performance to his learning disability, and related “adjustment issues”. I was pretty amazed by her failure to acknowledge what I saw as a dangerous pattern of reckless, destructive behavior. It seemed clear Pinkman wasn’t just some casual stoner. After months in my class, I had rarely seen him fully functional.

Nonetheless, I took what she said about the learning disability into consideration—I did try to work with him. I sensed a spark of interest now and then, and I wanted to coax it out, to see what lay behind the apathy. But my efforts were repeatedly met with scorn and dismissal. He wouldn’t do homework or study, and there was nothing I could do. I was not surprised when, around March, he disappeared from class altogether. What did surprise me was his return in the fall. According to his mother’s e-mail, he’d ended up in some type of treatment center. For the sake of his safety—and the safety of those around him—I’m glad.

This year’s Pinkman _is_ different—less mouthy, more sober. He’s easy enough to deal with, but his attendance and participation still have not improved. With the first quarter nearly past, and still no demonstrable effort from him, I’ve mostly written him off as a lost cause.

Today, Pinkman’s head stays down all through class. The period passes without major incident, though I feel closer to snapping than ever as I endure his classmates’ questions for the upcoming exam, most of which have already been answered sometime in the last ten minutes. Thank God my seventh period is free; I can’t keep this up for much longer. When the bell rings, I’m as glad as they are. I even end my lecture early so they can pack their things, something I oppose in my teaching philosophy.

It is on this day (of all days) that Jesse Pinkman approaches me after class.

“Hey, uh – could I talk to you for a second? Sir?”

I want to groan out load, but I’ve been tolerating bullshit all day, and I tell myself I can get through another five minutes of it—even from this particular student. If I'm honest with myself, I'm curious about what he has to say.  I sit down behind my desk and motion for him to pull up a chair. He does so, perching awkwardly on its edge, and proceeds to stare at the floor, all cocooned in his giant sweatshirt.

“Mr. Pinkman?” I prompt, out of patience. “What do you need?”

His eyes flick up to me, then back down. He licks his lips nervously.

“Well, you see, I’m…uh, really struggling, with the material, and everything. I mean, I’m trying, but I’m just not getting it. I don’t think I’m ready for the exam, and I was wondering if…if I could have an extension.”

For a moment, I’m amazed. I can’t restrain myself from mouthing a ‘Wow’. He doesn’t see, because he isn’t looking at me. Somehow, I manage to reply with a degree of composure.

“Pinkman, I literally warned you not to do this, not two months ago. You have made no effort to help yourself, and you will have to face the consequences.”

Pinkman barely reacts to this, eyes still averted. I’m about to ask if he heard what I said, when he lifts his hand, slowly and deliberately, curling his fingers around the edge of the desk.

We both sit transfixed, watching as his hand creeps toward my arm like a pale, bony spider. It settles on my sleeve, so lightly I can hardly feel it. His eyes flicker over mine for the barest moment—a blue flash.

“I could…I could make it worth your while,” the boy murmurs, barely stroking. 

This proves too much for my fragile system. Astonishment warps into rage in seconds; before I can think, I have seized his arm, yanked it toward myself to hold up like a prize. I hear a tiny gasp, the only sound from him.

His bones grind together like little branches. I press down like I would squeeze something out of him; some shining bead of precipitate worth from this red-tinged tangle of a boy (of a classroom—of a life.) I hear a labored pant, this side of a snarl and hardly human. I have Jesse Pinkman sprawled over my desk, clutching at its edge with his free hand, shirt askew where I’ve wrung it. His mouth is pinched in silent pain, eyes downcast. Even now, he won’t look at me.

Comprehension dawns—that glint I saw, he’s been protecting it. He was right to hide it from me.

My guts lurch. I let go, shocked awake, the day’s fever broken. Pinkman stumbles back, catching himself on the desk. He is clearer to me than anything I’ve seen since yesterday: sagging like a marionette with its strings cut, folding into himself, cradling his bruised arm. Stock-still. I see nothing in his eyes but clouds.

I’m disturbed—this is disturbing, there’s something wrong with what I’m seeing. And yet _everything_ is wrong with it.

I’ve just—I may have thrown away my job. Any minute now Pinkman will snap out of this creepy trance, scuttle off to Carmen’s office and show her the handprint that’s darkening in his sleeve. I can see it now: her stony look, the anger and betrayal in her eyes, her hand on Pinkman’s shoulder as she shields him from me.

I don’t understand what just happened. Again, reality has hideously reformulated itself, and I’m lost. I’ve mauled this scrap of a teenage student—there’s no way I can justify my actions. Even though, for as long as I’ve taught, I have warily avoided even the barest of physical contact with my students. Even though I have never struck Junior or Skyler, even though I have rarely had violent altercations of any kind.

 _This isn’t me_ , I think frantically. _This isn’t who I am!_

Suddenly, my exhausted anger returns in a flood, persecuted and indignant. It rushes against my ribs and eyes, mixes with confusion and shame. I’m filled with hate. I _hate_ how Pinkman’s hanging there, like a broken toy.

“What are you waiting for?” I bark, brandishing an arm. “Get out!”

The boy’s flinch animates him, and his eyes meet mine, big and scared. Then he’s reaching down, grabbing for his backpack, wobbling a bit beneath its weight. I blink twice, and he’s gone.


	2. Chapter 2

I can’t bear another second in this classroom, so I leave. I scuttle out the doors of J.P. Wynne like a fugitive from justice.

Caged-beast rage blew through me like a hit-and-run. All I’m left with now is a fried, senseless jumble of thoughts. I’m drained to the core, bone-tired. All I want is to sleep.

“I’m home,” I call into an empty house. I look at my watch. It’s a little before Junior’s school lets out; should be a good fifteen, twenty minutes before they’re back. Good—I have some time to collect myself. I need to be collected, especially after the disappearing act I pulled this morning. I should have let Skyler know. She called in a panic when she woke up alone in the house. I improvised an excuse involving a jammed printer and an embarrassing lapse in effective time management. I’m not sure that my story was all that convincing, and I don’t want to worry her further.

I lock myself into the bathroom, remove my glasses and just lean on the sink for a minute. I splash cold water on my face. It gives me a jolt of something lifelike, so I do it again, and again, like I could rinse off the grime of the day. I imagine that I can—picture all that hate swirling down the drain in a cool, clean rush. Without it, today was just fine. A little monotonous, somewhat frustrating, but fine. Par for the course when you’re an underpaid, overworked high school teacher.

At least I feel more awake now. I dry my face and run a comb through my hair. My shirt is all wet and close with crazy-person sweat, so I trade it for a clean sweatshirt. When I look in the mirror, I see my usual, familiar self, perhaps a bit red in the face. I try out his grin, and it passes. I can keep playing his part for as long as I need to.

I’m making myself a snack when I hear Skyler’s car in the driveway. I spread mayonnaise in an even coat on a slice of bread, then on another. I haven’t been eating well, lately, and it’s probably affecting my moods. Protein—very important. I cut the sandwich into triangles, calling, “Hey, there,” when Skyler and Junior appear in the doorway.

“Hey, Dad,” Junior says, sounding tired as he shuffles by. He treks over to the couch and flops dramatically, wriggling free of his backpack. He pushes it over to thump on the floor, face split by a huge yawn.

“Did you have fun at Dylan’s house?” I sit down in the armchair with my sandwich.

“Yeah,” Junior says. “He’s got a PS4.”

“Did you sleep at all?”

“Nope,” He yawns again, sprawling out on the couch. “I think I’m ready for a nap now.”

“Walter Junior,” Skyler warns, pushing two huge armfuls of groceries onto the counter. “You aren’t excused from homework just because you were up all night playing video games.”

“Your mother’s right,” I add helpfully.

“Just an hour,” Junior mumbles. He’s already halfway burrowed in the couch cushions.

“Okay, but set an alarm,” Skyler tells him, throwing an amused glance my way. “I’d better see you working at this table, right at”—she checks the time on the microwave display—“4:45.”

A vaguely affirmative noise comes from the couch. A minute later, a soft snore. I smile at his back and finish my sandwich. Skyler is putting the groceries away when I carry my plate to the kitchen.

“Hey,” she says, stacking yogurts in the fridge. “You’re home early.”

“I decided a ten-hour day was enough. I’m wiped out.” I rinse off my plate and put it in the dishwasher, turning to kiss her hello. She pecks me with a distracted smile, hefting a gallon of milk.

“Well, you didn’t get much sleep. Has it been really nuts?”

“No more so than usual,” I answer, pulling vegetables out of one of the grocery bags. “Test 2 is tomorrow for four out of five of my classes, and I’m behind with my regular group—barely started Module 3—so I’ve had to make up extra forms.”

“Do you need them proofread?”

“Ah, yeah, that would be wonderful, if you have time.”

“Just shoot me an e-mail. I’ll look them over before bed.”

“Thanks. So, how was your day?”

She rolls all the grocery bags into a ball and stuffs them into a cabinet. “Not bad. I’ve been really stuck on this chapter… but I made a little headway.”

“That’s good,” I say. “This is still the one with the, uh, flight attendant?”

“She’s an air marshal, Walt.”

“Ah. The air marshal. I’m sorry.”

She’s annoyed, but she laughs it off. “Oh—I finally got that closet sorted out. At least writer’s block is good for something. I swear to God…remember Marie’s boyfriend Liam, the one who threw her out of his apartment in the middle of January? Six, maybe seven years back?

“Well, we still had three tubs of her shit. All this bizarre costume jewelry and ‘vintage’ knick-knacks. I wish I’d gotten a picture, there was this _cookie jar,_ shaped like a _Gerber baby_. Honestly terrifying.  I mean, where does she even find this stuff?”

“Wow.” I shake my head. “Marie, in college, was—something.”

“Marie is always something,” Skyler shakes her head, too. “Anyway, she wouldn’t answer her phone, so I just loaded them up in the car, left ‘em on her porch.”

“Good for you.”

“Yep, well, now we have a closet we can actually use. I’d better get started on dinner—Junior’s had nothing but hot pockets and cereal since lunch yesterday.”

I rub my forehead. It looks like Dylan’s place has been added to the playdate blacklist.

“I should finish grading these study guides,” I excuse myself. “I’m going to be swamped with tests for the rest of the week.”

I sit down in the living room with a pile of papers and a red pen. I grade while Junior snores and Skyler clatters around the kitchen, cursing or humming every once in a while.

The living room grows dim as the sun sinks in the sky, and I struggle more and more with the students’ writing. I read and reread their answers and I still can’t piece together what they’re trying to say. I could get up early, couldn’t I? Finish up in the morning, when I’m fresh. My eyelids droop, lulled by the safe atmosphere, and I’m too tired to fight it.

***

Pinkman is absent on Wednesday, again on Thursday. It’s hardly unprecedented behavior—not long ago he missed a straight week. He’s missed entire months of my class, and still made it back somehow.

Knowing this does nothing to tamp down the paranoia which snarls, like a thorny vine, over the minutes and hours of my days.

Thursday has a good enough start, with a full breakfast by Skyler, and a blue sky above my dashboard, brightening with feathery clouds. I settle into my classroom with plenty of time to prepare for the day.  Even so, it feels like there's not enough room, anywhere.  It’s like I’m slogging through mud, and classes haven’t even begun. Grudgingly, I hike back down the hallway to the teacher’s lounge. My limbs feel terribly heavy, like slabs of misshapen concrete.

I fill a paper cup with cooked-down, piss-grade coffee. I don’t bother with the little capsules of creamer, the paper packets of Sweet’N Low—I’m too tired to shine shit. The coffee is terrible, but at least it is honest.

Ambling back to my classroom, I start at the sight of Carmen approaching me, mere feet away, like she popped out of nowhere. Scalding coffee sloshes over my knuckles and splatters on the floor.

“God _damn_ it,” I mutter.

“Good morning, Walt,” Carmen greets me with the dauntless cheer which has always somewhat mystified and disturbed me. Today, her tones ring with sinister falsity. As she looks me over, professional smile in place, I feel sure that she knows—sees the beast blinking back at her.

“Good morning,” I manage.

“Come on, Walt, wake up!” She laughs, all good humor, patting my arm as she moves on. I wander back to the classroom in a paranoid haze, weaving around clusters of yammering students. Their voices coagulate into a wall of undifferentiated noise, pressing on me from all sides.

Fortunately, my AP class is first in the morning—truly an act of grace. There are only 14 students in the class, and they are predictably studious and well-behaved. My only real problem with them centers on the question someone asks me every day: “Is this on the exam?”

Of all my students, the AP students are always the neediest. Without fail, they badger me for their test grades starting the very next day. Their parents are just as needy, and much more demanding. Still, every now and then, I get a real gem of a student in this class.

I have already given this year’s group my speech on the importance of AP exams. I’ve long since accepted that they are the be-all and end-all for most of the students; they’re all here for the college credit, or because they come from high-pressure families. Nonetheless, every year I try to convey my wish that they will learn a thing or two for their own sakes. They just look confused when I tell them this, and then it’s back to the usual conversation: how many questions from the current module will be on the exam, will the questions be worded like that, and so on and so forth. I’m running out of ways to tell them I haven’t seen the damn thing, any more than they have.

They’re easy today, though, since I’m caught up grading all their work. All the rest of my classes had exams yesterday—as always, I extend the post-exam day of respite to my sleep-deprived worrywarts. Today’s lab is just a simple worksheet without a lab report, a sort of chemical treasure hunt. They’re combining known with unknown solutions, recording their observations of the reactions, and identifying the mystery solutions through process of elimination. As usual, Andrea Cantillo completely over-thinks the assignment; most of the solutions are so simple to place she thinks she must have them wrong.

It borders on amoral how hard these kids work for a credit which, in my experience, amounts to an auditorium-sized jerkoff session at most colleges.

The day passes slowly, but without much resistance. I’m distracted, so it’s good I’m not giving any lectures. The students have fun with the lab. They manage to chat with each other, for the most part, without reaching offensive noise levels. Even Pinkman would have done okay with this, if he was here. His seat, empty as it so often is, keeps drawing me to it like a magnet. It seems to speak the chilling truth.

_You are nothing more than an animal. You’ll die an animal’s death—panting, snapping, clawing to the end._

I don’t go home straight away. I drive, and I find myself in the parking lot of a small park a few streets down from the school. It’s an ugly little lot, nothing much but a rusty swing-set and a sort of ominous play structure with a tube slide which I would definitely check inside of before letting my child on it.

Behind the playground, there’s a dense thicket of trees and brush, a couple trails winding through it. On one side, the vegetation tapers off into a patchily maintained ball field. I wander in the opposite direction, where the woods grow denser. The path narrows, clogged with wet clumps of leaves and streaks of rain-flattened garbage.

I remember why I used to like it here—it’s oddly tranquil, as if lost in time. It’s like I’m in a bubble. I pass a woman and her stupid, squash-faced little dog. I hurry past a clearing where a couple kids are huddled together, smoking, atop a picnic table. Otherwise, there’s no one. I feel really alone here.

I walk until I reach a familiar place, hardly changed in all these years. This is where I came to think when I first started teaching. I descend the broad, crumbling stone stairs, taking a seat on the second-to-lowermost step. A deep groove, like a scar, runs from the top stair to the bottom, a trickle of a creek weaving down into the dirty bed below. The tinkling murmur of the water calms me as I sit among dead leaves, cigarette butts and trampled beer cans. This is a stagnant place, a place for dead and dying and discarded things. I settle in with the debris, and catch my breath.

Sitting here, I only think small pointless thoughts. They alight and take off again easy as birds. Eventually, though, the waning light shakes me out of the spell. I stand with creaking joints, taking a minute to stretch out my damned, withering body.

It’s time to go home.

When I get there, the light is leaching fast from the sky. I struggle for a minute with the lock—it needs to be replaced—and step inside, calling “I’m home.”

“Hey, Dad,” Junior calls back from the couch. He doesn’t look up from the screen of the family laptop he uses to play Minecraft, his favorite computer game. I spend a lot of time hearing about this game, but I really don’t understand it.

I ask Junior some question, but I don’t hear the answer. I smell dinner—God, I’m nauseous—but Skyler is nowhere to be seen.

I find her in the bedroom. She’s sitting in the dark on our made bed, back to me.

“Skyler?”

She half-turns at the sound of her name, and the look on her face tells me it’s over. Her wet blue eyes catch the light spilling in from the hallway, standing out stark and almost wild, searching me.

The jig is up. I can barely breathe.

“Why didn’t you call?”

She pulls her feet up on the bed, holding herself in a bundle of distress.

“You can’t keep leaving me like this, to wonder—if you’ve been in an accident, or you just got held up at school.”

I sit, heavily, beside her. She looks me in the face, trying to find my eyes, growing more upset by the second. I haven’t put together, yet, what I’m going to say—my jaw feels stuck, my lungs choked with lies and sickness.

“I know it’s not, _rational_ , where my mind goes,” she continues, each word carefully formed and potent. “You’re always saying that, but it doesn’t keep me from going there. It doesn’t keep me from feeling when something is wrong... Walt, you haven’t been talking to me, and I'm scared.”

I dislodge an apology from the block of tar in my throat, coughing “I’m sorry.” The words fall on the bed between us like a lump of viscera.

I stare at a smudge of dirt on my trouser leg. I breathe. I open my mouth and close it, on repeat, feeling out the shapes of words I can’t quite grasp.

“Walt, what’s _wrong_?” Skyler grips my shoulders, moving us so I can’t avoid her. She’s strong now, filling the gap, feet on the ground. “My God, Walt, you’re white as a sheet. What is going on?”

For a moment, I want to believe this is something she can handle. Skyler White: Problem Solver, armed to the teeth with an Internet connection, two or more phones, and a forceful mix of resourcefulness and obstinacy. I hate myself for it, but right now, I feel like I’m home, collapsed at the door after days and miles in the wilderness. For once, I want to pass the burden to someone else, and _rest_.

This scares me more than anything. I snap myself out of it, force words out.

“Skyler, there’s... something I have to tell you.”

“Tell me.”

“I. I touched this student.”

(I force _all the wrong words_ out.)

“You what?!?”

“No, not—not like that,” I swallow down a lump of shame. “I—grabbed his arm, squeezed it…I hurt him.”

Skyler stares at me, lost.  Her face twists up with confusion, fear and fortitude, all crashed together. I'm reminded of why I love her.

“Why would you do that?”

“He—he _came onto me_. After class.” Hearing the words out loud, I bark an ugly laugh. What an incredible joke. “Wanted… an extension on his exam? In exchange for sexual favors.”

I’ve never heard a faker-sounding story. Honestly, what a terrible deal for Pinkman. If I was going to touch my professor’s dick…even _look_ at it…at the very least, I’d have an A guaranteed. Really, I'd want the asshole at my beck and call, dropping everything to write me a letter of recommendation at 3 in the morning. I sure as hell wouldn’t put myself through something like that for a few extra weeks on a test I'd probably _still fail_.

What the hell was that poor kid thinking? I cover my mouth to stifle a burst of hysterical laughter.

“Oh my God,” Skyler sounds out, horrified. “But Walt, that’s, so not like you. To fly off the handle like that—”

“I know,” I say. “That’s what I really need to tell you.

“Skyler, I have lung cancer. Stage 3A. Inoperable, is what they said.”

I look her in the eyes when I tell her. I see the struggle play out on her face, as she casts around for any reason to reject what I’ve told her, breathes “Oh, no.”

I see it when she realizes there’s no lifeline.  Her eyes beg me for help, but I’ve already looked everywhere, and I’ve come up empty. She wants it to be a joke or a lie but she’s quick enough to know, already, that a blow like this one can’t be softened or deflected, only absorbed.

She suffers it with stoic grace; holds herself around the middle as she sinks forward, protecting her soft parts.

I’ve been waiting for the same thing to happen for me—to feel the impact. I’ve been holding it off for as long as I can, anesthetizing the wound with denial and distraction. I know somehow I cannot bear it with her composure. I will snap and writhe and fight the way I’ve always done. I’ll make it worse for myself because I don’t know any better. If this blow finds me it will tear me apart, bit by bit, and it will tear at the people around me, too.

Skyler’s mouth moves, feels its way around the new sounds it must learn. It can’t, yet. She wraps her arms around me like a child seeking comfort. She hides her face in my chest and I want to bury myself in her, too. Be a child, just for a minute. Here we are, two full-grown adults, scared shitless and barely breathing.  What are we going to do?

I find if I hold her head, and stroke her hair in a slow even rhythm, I can push it back—this ice-cold terror that’s stabbing me in the lungs. I know I’ve been stabbed but I’ve learned through daily practice how to cut off a piece of myself. It can’t be kept like that forever, but maybe that won’t be a problem—I no longer have need for words like “forever.” Best case scenario, a couple of years. Hell, I’ve repressed a host of psychic injuries for a couple of decades, and then some. What’s the specter of one’s own, imminent mortality, next to the horror of childhood sexuality?

“Mom, Dad? Dinner is cold!” Junior shouts from the kitchen, startling us awake.

We disentangle ourselves, come back to life. We take deep breaths, rub the grit of terror out of our eyes. We straighten up, try on faces in the mirror. I can play my part, but she can’t—she’s shaking too hard. Her lip trembles and she passes a hand over her face, trying to calm herself, but instead she crumples.

I put my arm around her. “Why don’t you just lay down. I’ll feed him, tell him you have a headache.”

She nods around a hiccup, squeezing my hand hard and then letting go. I hear her start the shower as I walk down the hall.

Junior asks me if something is wrong, and I tell him his mom's got a bad migraine. I load cold pork chops and halved sweet potatoes onto two plates and microwave them. I’ll check in with Skyler in a little while in case she’s hungry.

I let Junior eat on the couch and watch TV. Skyler wouldn’t like it, but I’d rather he was occupied. Even over the TV, and the sound of the water, we can hear Skyler cry. I don’t think she’s ever cried like this. I don’t know what I’d tell Junior, if he asked me what's happening.

***

It’s Friday, and everything is fine.

I have progressed through rage, guilt, paranoia, existential horror, and mortal terror, coming to rest in a kind of calm dread. Doom walks me to class and sees me off at the door, very civilized.

I feel fully functional, even on short sleep. Skyler was up half the night with her computer, Googling every cancer thing under the sun. She can switch into Problem Solving mode with alarming abruptness, and last night it was in full, frantic force. She’s already identified the best oncologists in New Mexico, filled pages and pages of her legal pad with sprawling budget calculations, and even sketched out a week’s worth of chemo meal plans. I nodded through all of this, if only to show support for her coping strategy. I am unable to approach—much less process—my feelings about any of it.

I guess this is something like acceptance, I think as I skim over lesson plans. Skyler wanted me to call in sick today, but I told her I couldn’t. She wants to spend the day looking at treatment options, making the necessary arrangements, and generally acknowledging and confronting the threat of cancer in our lives. Exactly the opposite of what I want.

Anyhow, it would feel like running, and I’m not ready to run. I’m still waiting to be punished for my fit of savagery. My self-control hasn’t cracked open like that in a very long time, and it eats at me—that piece of me Jesse saw. It pants in the dark and claws my thoughts to bits. It bothers me more than the cancer.

At this point, Pinkman probably won't tell anyone I was rough with him. Surely, if he was going to tell, he would have done it already. But if he does, I’ll deal with it, some way or another. In the end, it’s of little consequence. Employed or not—disgraced or not—I’m going to die. Within the year, chances are.

Best of all, I’ll leave massive debts when I go. Tens of thousands in the course of months, a small fortune in the red. This to pay for treatment which I’m told will probably fail. At best, it will delay the inevitable, and at worst, it will suck away my last shreds of vitality and comfort, traded in for scrimpy little scraps of time that aren’t worth having.

I see page after page ripped from Skyler’s pad, blue ink overlapping, weaving over and under the lines. By 2:30 AM, the pages spread over half the bed, each messier than the last, like thoughts pulled straight from my head. It just won’t add up, for either of us. I keep coming back to it: I might as well die with some dignity. (At least, without debt.)

Thank God it’s Friday, I hear while I’m pouring the terrible coffee. Exhausting as the week has been, I’m not glad to see it end—I’d rather be here than home. I know what to expect here. Interactions are confined to a surface level, and I don’t have much time to think. Home has grown tangled and thorny. Overnight, its safe routines have been thrown into a precarious balance, unknowns poking up everywhere I look.

The rigid structure of public school, the portioning of the day into seven equal blocks of time, is soothingly exact. Precisely timed waves carry the students into my classroom, with their backpacks and purses, binders and phones, stares and whispers. Fifty minutes pass and they wash back out, like clockwork.

Year after year, I teach them—in the proper order—chemistry’s fundamental concepts, boiled down. These laws, theories, and principles are for me as ingrained and immediate as the English alphabet. I watch as the students scribble down my summaries, and I wonder sometimes if any of them are affected lastingly by these concepts.  Whether some kid’s mental model of their world just transformed, expanded, attained a new dimension.

I first studied chemistry in a small, hot, dimly lit basement. Chemistry wasn’t a mandatory subject at my high school, and only a handful of my year took the class. I took whatever science classes I could, though I was often bored even in my favorite subjects. I read compulsively all through my childhood and adolescence, mostly non-fiction, and frequently I knew more than my teachers.  I was as compelled by the intricate workings of reality as I was avoidant of my own life.

Before 11th grade, I hadn’t read much about chemistry except in passing—my interests lay in outer space, chaos theory and wormholes, the Big Bang, primordial Earth. I loved thinking of things that are too big to think of, reading about events so unspeakably old they seem to swallow time alive. Gigantic, mind-blowing, perspective-shattering classic sci-fi fodder—I couldn’t get enough of that stuff. I hadn’t made it, yet, to the microscopic infinite, the other side of the mirror.

Chemistry brought cosmic awe—this wonder I felt for a world I couldn’t touch, for a home too vast to apprehend with human senses, which rose nonetheless from the pages of my books—down to the level of life. To matter I could measure and manipulate, matter whose properties I might master and bend. I survived childhood by flinging myself into space, but the man I became was built with the basic units of existence.

In a dank dungeon of a classroom, my universe reformed. A vast grid settled down over everything, dividing and uniting at once. Atoms, all of it, and the particles which propel them, negatively and positively. Whole numbers. Everything quantified—almost—broken up into units, and yet cosmically whole. Guided by patterns which I can infer from the microscopic level to the level of daily life—of self and other, career and cancer, Skyler White and Jesse Pinkman.

He returns, today, like someone’s prodigal son. He skulks to his seat with a pronounced slouch, dropping his bag with a thud on the table. Then he sprawls back in his chair and stays like that for the rest of the period, staring at me. A few of his classmates shoot glances between us, clearly hoping for some drama. I ignore his display as best I can, feeling a sharp mix of anxiety and relief.

He waits for all the others to drain out before he confronts me. I wipe the chalkboard clean, file the students’ lab reports away in my 6th period folder. When I look up, he’s standing a few feet away, idly shaking a bottle of hydrochloric acid.  I sit, sighing.

“Please put that down. Haven’t you spoken to anyone?”

He doesn’t answer me. Instead, he saunters over, bottle in hand, and plants himself on the edge of my desk. He leans into my space, right arm proffered, pushing up his sleeve with a creepy grin.

“Take a peek.”

Sure enough, there’s a ring of purple marks around his wrist. I remember how hard I wrenched it, far beyond simply removing his hand. I squeezed and twisted it as hard as I could, just to cause pain. I’m slightly shocked by how frail his arm looks, thrust in my face. What is he, eighteen years old? Nineteen? I wonder if this is a normal size for a young man his age. Close up like this, he doesn’t look too healthy—his face is very angular, very pale, his eyes framed in rose-brown shadow.

“Jesse,” I say. “I am—terribly sorry. I don’t know what came over me.”

He swings his legs back and forth, huffing a laugh. “ _Jesse_ , is it? Now you wanna act like a human being.”

“I..."

“Don’t feel too bad,” he interrupts, a dark edge to his voice. “I bruise easy.  Looks worse than it is.” He looks up with a calculating stare. “I guess you could get in big trouble for this, anyhow.”

I’m not sure how to respond. The kid’s in a position to blackmail me, and he knows it.

He puts on a show of examining his arm, prodding it with clinical interest. “I think this bruise merits at least a D. Don’t you?”

That smirk is new—he’s enjoying himself. This new persona makes me uneasy, and not just because of the awkward position he’s put me in. I’m reminded of other strange behaviors of his.  Specifically, the eerie catatonia I witnessed on Tuesday. How rapidly he shifted from his usual sullenness, to the feeble seduction attempt, to that frozen-rabbit pose. There’s something going on with him, and I’m not sure if I want to find out what it is.

“Well? What do you think, Missstawhite?”

He’s standing again, arms crossed over his chest, the posture a contrary mix of defense and intimidation.

It reminds me that I hurt this kid, however unintentionally. (Mindlessly.) I don’t know if he’s a minor, but he sure as hell looks like one. I hold a position of power, here, and I showed him I’d use it to humiliate him. Somehow I feel his distress, like a cornered animal’s, seeping across the space between us. He’s scared and desperate, using the one bargaining chip available. I find I don’t have the stomach to fight him on this—to bully or manipulate him out of using the chip _I_ gave him.

I’m damn lucky he hasn’t told anyone what I did. I owe him something in return.

“Okay, yes. You’ll get your D,” I say slowly. 

I've been milling it over in my head all day, and I follow my sudden strong impulse. “I think I have a better offer, if you’ll hear it.”

“Uh, thanks, but I dunno if people will, like, buy it if I get a C.”

“Not that,” I say. “I mean tutoring. You and me. Tuesdays and Thursdays, maybe, to start—as many days of the week as you need to get caught up in your classes.”

He looks incredulous, even alarmed. “Hold up, let me get this straight…you yank me around, scare the shit out of me, and now you think I wanna be _alone_ with you?  Like on a regular basis?”

“I understand if you’re not comfortable with that,” I concede. “But if you’re willing to give it a shot… I guarantee you will graduate in June.”

“Seriously?” He shoots back, picking his sleeve in agitation. “You guarantee? Are we talking like, money-back guarantee, here? Like I’ll still get my D even if your _genius_ instruction doesn’t turn me around?”

I nod, ignoring the attitude. “Yes. Money-back guarantee—you’ll pass, one way or another. But I think you can do better than pass.”

He scoffs.

“Think about it. I’ll be here Tuesday at 4 o’ clock. If you show up, and it goes okay, we can come up with a schedule.”

For a minute, Jesse just blinks at the floor.

“Yeah, okay,” he says finally, clutching his bag and turning away. “I’ll think about it.”

***

I’m eating my words, Tuesday.

I set up at a table in the front row with a textbook, a study guide from the first exam, and my lecture notes from the pertinent sections.  Based on Jesse's first exam grade—32%—I think I'd better start at the beginning.  Scientific method, measurement, some math basics.  I start off strong; I'm determined to see this through, even if he fights me on it.  My weekend was fucking wretched, but I'm not thinking about it.  I'm not thinking about what home will be like when I get there.  I have a job to do, here, and I'm going to give it my full focus. 

I arrange and rearrange papers as the minutes stretch on, wondering if Jesse will make an appearance after all.  Maybe he's content with his unearned D, even though—from what I've gathered—he's doing as poorly in his other classes as he is in mine.  It's really in his best interest to take me up on this, unless he's planning to provoke _all_ of his teachers to violence before the year is out.

It's 4:15 when he finally stalks in, and he comes with a giant chip on his shoulder.

 _Keep it together,_ I tell myself.  _He's a difficult student.  You've had dozens of difficult students._

“Right, then,” he barks, clattering into the seat beside me. “You gonna show me the light, or what?”

With effort, I disregard this blatant rudeness.  I wonder how far my guilt will carry me before I snap back at him.  But I'm not going to do that.  I'm going to act like an adult.

"Yes, well—as you know, chemistry is a discipline which builds on itself, conceptually.  Because of this, I think we'd better start from the beginning, to ensure that your foundation is solid, moving forward.  To start, why don't we look at your notes from the first module?"

He rolls his eyes, reluctantly pulling a spiral notebook out of his bag.  There are papers sticking out of it at every angle, puffing it up to twice its proper size.  As he flips through it, I see more Spongebob Squarepants characters than anything. 

After a very long minute of searching, he announces, "Oh—here."

I take the notebook from him and glance over his notes, quickly concluding there's nothing salvageable.  I sigh, shutting the battered notebook with finality.

"Okay.  Well.  What do you know about the scientific method?"

He blinks.

"What, do you think, is the first step?" I try.

"Um.  Oh, I know.  You think of a question you wanna, you know, answer."

"Yes, very good," I approve, relieved that he's cooperating.  "We call such a question a _hypothesis —_ a testable prediction which may be supported, or not, by your experiment."

"Hypothesis, yeah." 

"What, then, is the next step in the scientific method?"

He fidgets uncertainly with the spiral binding of his notebook.  It's all twisted out of shape, barely holding the pages together.

"You, uh—do an experiment?  Test your idea?"

"That's almost right," I say.  "First, you'll want to do background research—find out what research has already been conducted on your topic.  It might seem dull, but it's extremely important in informing your experimental design."

He scowls.  "What?"

Okay, that's fair.  "Think of it like—guiding your project in the right direction.  You find out how others have tried to test similar hypotheses.  Maybe you notice gaps in the research."

"Um, okay."

"So, now that you have your background..."

"Now you do the experiment?"

"Yes, exactly.  Can you tell me some of the essential ingredients of an experiment?"

He frowns, looking thrown by the more open-ended question.  He starts pulling on the spiral again, chewing on his bottom lip. 

I spare him. "Well, first of all, an experiment requires you to impose some _treatment—_ this is also known as the independent variable.  It's basically the condition you're interested in studying.  Do you know what a dependent variable is?"

"It's, uh—it's what happens," he tries.

"Yes, that's one way to put it.  The dependent variable is the outcome of the experiment—the variable that changes according to the independent variable, if you've designed your experiment correctly.  Okay.  What, then, must you include in your experimental design, to ensure that the independent variable really is controlling the dependent variable?"

"Dude," he bursts out.  "Can't you speak in, like, English?"

I bristle at his tone, then make myself stop, taking a deep breath.  He's right.  I should use simpler terms. He's looking at me out of the corner of his eye, shrunk back just a bit.

"Right.  I'm sorry, I'll try to use simpler terms. So, if you want to be sure that the thing you're testing, really is being affected by what you think is affecting it, you need to use a control.  A control group doesn't receive the treatment—it's something of a yardstick to measure against."

"Yeah, okay," he says, rubbing his eyes.

"The control group receives a placebo treatment."

"That's like—sugar pills, right?"

"Yes, exactly, that's one example of a placebo.  It can be any treatment with a neutral effect.  However, the placebo has to be indistinguishable from the active treatment—otherwise, your results may be biased."

"'Cause if you know you got the placebo, you might act different," He says.  "Um, I was in a clinical trial."

"Well, that's great—you've had firsthand experience with a real experiment."

We get through the section okay.  I'm feeling encouraged, and Jesse's starting to look a little less hunted.  Then we try to work on math, and it all falls apart.

"Significant figures are significant because they reflect the accuracy level of your measurement.  Say you're calculating the mass of a precipitate, for example, based on the volume of one reactant.  If you measured the volume to three sig figs, you wouldn't report the mass of the precipitate with  _five._ You just don't have that level of confidence in your measurements." 

I wait for some response from him. 

"I don't understand _anything_ you just said," He grits out, tugging on his hair.  This kid has about a hundred nervous tics.  "I mean, yeah, I get the precision thing... but I don't get _sig figs_ at all.  I mean, why isn't this one 4?  It's got... one, two, three, and four digits!"

"You have to count zeros when they're between two non-zero digits."

"But, what about the other one, the one you just did..."

"You mean #5?"

"Yeah!  You didn't count it, there."

"In #5, the zero isn't between two non-zeros, even though it's after the decimal."

He groans, burying his face in his hands. 

"I know the rules must seem like a lot, but they're really quite simple.  You just have to use them, over and over until they're second nature.  By doing the homework." 

"I've tried doing the homework!" He cries.  "I never know what the hell is going on, and even when I think I do, I get everything wrong!  And if I get it right you _still_ count me wrong cuz I was off by like one fucking decimal!"

Always so dramatic.  "Look, significant figures are extremely important in chemistry, Jesse.  They tell us the level of confidence we may have—"

"I don't have to be here!" He kicks the leg of the table, hard, sending it veering to the side, the textbook hitting the floor with a bang.  "So you can stop treating me like a moron!"

I round on him, nerves rattled. 

"Will you _grow up_?" I shout. 

He jumps back in his chair; the spark of fear in his eyes turns quickly to venom.

“What are you gonna do—shake some sense into me?” He taunts, puffing back up.

I stop, slide my glasses off, and pinch the bridge of my nose, breathing deeply. I knew this wouldn’t be easy. 

“It was not my intention to— _threaten_ you.” I say, resignedly pulling the table straight.  I reach down to retrieve the book; the pages are all squashed against the floor.  

“You don’t need to threaten me.”

“Why are you sabotaging this?” I demand, straightening up.  I try for the sincerest tone I can manage—I want him to really listen. “Contrary to appearances, I’m being as patient as I can. Can’t you just _try_ … just for today? Even for ten minutes?”

He careens from glib to stormy in a heartbeat.

“Are you shitting me?” he laughs bitterly. “You think I haven't been trying?  You have _no_ idea, man.  What you're trying to do, here—it's pointless, and stupid.  I can't learn this stuff, and you're not just gonna _make_ me learn it."

“Is that really what you think?” I counter. “You're going to give up just like that? I’ve seen you, Pinkman. You haven’t given this an honest effort. And I want to see what happens when you do.”

His fists clench, indignant syllables tumbling out in a rush.

“What the hell do you know?! I am, _exhausted_!  I just want to lay down on the floor, but here I am, trying, because  _you_ asked me to—and now all you can do is make fun of me!"

He's panting by now.  His face is too pale, and he's pulling his hair again.

"You keep saying all this shit about _honest_ effort, like I never even tried, but you're wrong!  It's not my fault I'm fucking retarded!"

“Jesse,” I say, and I say it again, until he looks at me. “Jesse, who told you that—who called you that?"

He slouches away from me, fists clenched around his sleeves, eyes squeezing shut.  He's going to bolt any minute.

"Hey," I say, naturally adopting the tone you use with a hurt stray.  "I wasn't trying to make fun of you.  I promise.  I'm sorry I came across that way." 

Jesse puts his head between his knees, making a small distressed sound.  Is he sick?

"Are you... okay?" I ask cautiously.  "Hey, Jesse."

I'm starting to feel alarmed, the longer he stays hunched over like that.  I don't dare touch him.

Just when I'm starting to think I should call someone, he uncurls, slowly sitting up.  "Sorry," he rasps.   

"Are you sick?  You don't look so good."

"I just.  I think I just haven't had enough to eat." He leans heavily on the table, head balanced on his elbow, blinking listlessly.  "Just give me a minute."

"When was the last time you ate?"

"Umm.  Don't remember."

"Okay," I say. "You just sit tight, for a minute.  I'll be right back, okay?"

I don't wait for an answer, hurrying out of the room and to the teacher's lounge, which is thankfully empty.  I root around in the cabinets and find some saltine crackers and a bottle of water. When I can't find anything else, I steal someone's chocolate Ensure out of the refrigerator. 

Back in the classroom, Jesse's head is on the table. 

"Hey, Jesse?"

When he doesn't respond, I gently touch his shoulder, and he moans. 

"I know you're tired, but I need you to drink this, okay?  You're going to feel a lot better afterwards.  Can you do that?"

I break open the seal on the drink. I'm prepared to feed it to him if I have to. I've gone into full sick-kid mode.  Fortunately, he lifts his head, and obediently drinks the thing in a few gulps. 

"That's good," I say, taking the empty bottle from him.  "Why don't you have some crackers, too?"

He nods in acceptance.  I pass them to him, one at a time, and he finishes four of the packs, taking long gulps of water in between.  Gradually, he seems to recover.  At least, I don't think he's going to faint.

"Sorry," he says after a while. 

"There's nothing to be sorry for."

"Uh, yeah.  I have um, this blood sugar thing.  It's really embarrassing.  But I'm fine now."

"Does that happen often?"

He scrubs a hand over his face.  "Uh, no, I just, forgot to eat.  You know, when I was supposed to."

I know he's lying, but I don't call him out.  I have something else I want to say.

"Jesse—I'm sorry for what I said earlier.  I was wrong when I said you haven't tried.  I shouldn't have assumed."

He gives me a look that says, _Please don't do this._

I can't help myself, though.  

"What you said about yourself earlier—you know it's not true, right?"

He doesn't answer, so I plow on.  "Maybe you don't think in quite the same way most people do.  I'm telling you—it's not some defect.  Thinking differently... don't you know that's where _genius_ comes from?  Hell, Albert Einstein never finished school, and look at him. 

"Great minds, by definition, don't work like ordinary people's.  That's why they're able to see things in new ways.  That's how they drive the _change_ in this world. And _t_ _hat's_ the kind of mind you have, Jesse.  It's not broken or defective, and it would be a shame to waste it.  Taking drugs, hurting yourself... when there's so much you can do that you've never imagined."

I stop for breath.  Jesse looks dumbfounded, lost for words.

I feel pretty self-satisfied.  I really put my all into that speech, even if parts of it were recycled from previous conversations with troubled students. The Einstein thing is kind of a cliché.  But Jesse looks like he’s heard something revelatory.

I want him to know they aren't just empty words. I truly believe there is something rare in him. It’s a shy, wary sort of rare thing, but it deserves the patience and the care it needs to grow.

“There's a lot more going on in there than you let on, isn't there?"

Jesse's frightened, biting down hard on his lip. 

"If you’re willing to move outside of your comfort zone—I’ll do the same. I’ll do what it takes to teach you, if you’re ready to learn.”

When he speaks, his voice comes out quiet and hoarse. “Are you serious?”

“I’m serious,” I say, and somehow, I have no doubts. This instant, here, in my classroom—his floored look—there's something in my heart.  This is something else entirely.  It's alive.  I will follow it until my lungs give out.

“I know I haven’t given you any reason to trust me. I don’t expect you to believe me when I say I’m sorry for what I did. If you’ll let me, though, I hope I can show you—I’ll never do anything like that again."

I’m half-expecting him to laugh, call bullshit. Instead, there are tears in his eyes. He’s trying to hide them in his sleeves, hands clenched around the back of his neck. He sniffles, cruelly gnawing his lip—I’m worried he’ll make himself bleed.

“I’m going to take a bathroom break,” I tell him, standing up. “And get some coffee while I’m at it. Do you want some?”

He nods quickly, still hiding. I dawdle for awhile in the hall and the lounge to give him a moment to himself.

When I return, he’s gotten himself together. He’s sketching something in his notebook.  I sit down beside him and see that he’s drawn a tiny, coiled snake in the corner of a page, just the edge of a forked tongue poking out of its mouth.

It’s such an obvious self-portrait. How precious, and sad. A surge of protectiveness wells up in me, and I’m taken aback by its vehemence. I’m heartened, too—it feels right.  It feels natural. It’s been so long since I experienced emotion in this way, as fluid, useful energy. For once, feeling guides me towards what is important, instead of tangling me up in knots.

I give him the cup of coffee, and pull a handful of creamer and sugar packets from my pocket, dropping them on the table in front of him. He looks at me in surprise. I watch as he peels open a creamer and dumps it into the coffee, then tears open a sugar and dumps that in. Methodically, he alternates between creamer and sugar until he’s used it all.

The little ritual seems to calm him, and I give myself a point. Apparently I’m keeping a scorecard of Jesse-related efforts that haven’t ended in disaster. So far, I have 2.  Maybe 3?

I look dubiously at the brick of words the textbook has to offer on the subject of sig figs. I think that’s enough math for now. I don’t want to push him any more today. Even if we didn’t cover much actual material, I think we both learned something.

Feeling suddenly inspired, I throw him a gesture— _Stay here_ —and duck into the supply closet. Maybe what we both need is a good explosion.

***

Skyler holds my hand while I give my name to the receptionist. She clacks away at her keyboard, then hands me a pen and clipboard wedged with forms.

I sit heavily in the nearest chair, preparing myself to spend the next hour enumerating every minute and half-remembered detail of my medical history. The waiting room is soothingly dim, lined with plastic chairs. An electric fountain babbles on a low shelf beneath the shaded window. Fanned on top of the shelf are an assortment of pamphlets: _Chemotherapy and You_ , _A Patient’s Guide to Clinical Trials_ , and _Keeping it Together: Cancer and the Family_.

Besides Skyler and I, there is a middle-aged woman a few seats down, and an elderly couple sitting across from us. They seem to sink into each other, bodies pale and leaden in their chairs. In the far corner of the room, a young boy is curled up in a ball, quietly weeping. It's so soft it's hardly audible over the background music, but filled with such grief it seems to affect everyone here. Skyler, especially—she’s fidgeting beside me, scrolling and scrolling on her phone.

I start writing. Name, sex, marital status. Date of birth, age, SSN, occupation, race, ethnicity, language spoken. Same for Skyler—my Spouse or Responsible Party.

“I need your social security,” I whisper, passing her the clipboard.

I don’t want to be here. It feels like the waiting room for Hell. I’m waiting to be pumped with toxic chemicals until I'm exhausted and weak. Then, I’ll send off the bill to my billionaire former business partners, and they’ll feel so wonderfully magnanimous, absolved of any pesky guilt they might have lingering.  They're just _so_ glad they could give something back.  I think of how Skyler broke down into tears as she profusely thanked them, and I gnash my teeth.  I could just feel the upper-class, self-congratulatory, emotional fucking vampirism. 

Skyler hands back the clipboard. Well, there’s one page down.

I’m taking a look around, trying to recall if I’ve been exposed to benzene, when I catch eyes across the room. I blink, sure I’m mistaken. Can that be—?

Sure enough, it’s Jesse Pinkman huddled in that chair—I can't seem to escape him.  He's blinking back at me with his mouth hanging open, just as shocked as me. His eyes and nose are red and shiny with tears; I watch as he scrubs his face with his sleeve, sniffing loudly. He shoves a hand into his hoodie pocket and crams some earphones into his ears, tinny hip-hop overlaying tame jazz. After a second, he chances another peek. I raise my eyebrows, questioning. Why on Earth are you here?

He just furrows his brow, looking lost, and retreats into his ball. I shake my head and return to the forms, scribbling answers in as fast as I can. I can’t believe how thick this stack of paper is. Could I have printed these off somewhere and filled them out ahead of time?

This definitely feels like purgatory, I think as I record my father’s cause of death. At least Jesse has stopped crying.

I’m in the home stretch, tearing through the list of medical symptoms—No, No, No, Yes, No—with just two pages to go, when I hear him speak. I look up to see a short woman in a bandana collapse in the chair beside him. He squeezes her hand as she catches her breath, says something to her that’s too low to hear. She’s not his mother—I wonder what their relationship is.

“Do you know her?” Skyler whispers.

I look over at her. “No—the kid is a student of mine.”

“Oh.”

She goes silent again as I finish the forms and return them to the receptionist. She tells me the doctor will be with me soon, and I thank her. I return to my seat, watching as Jesse Pinkman and his relative slowly cross the room, his hand on her elbow. He gives me a last, uncertain look as he holds the door for her.

“Walter White?” I stand back up, give Skyler a kiss and some species of smile. I’m doing this for her, for Walter Jr. I feel death in my shadow; I’m certain that it’s near. But I’ll let them keep hoping for as long as it’s feasible. I’ll fake optimism, leave them with as many happy memories—as few painful ones—as I can manage. And when it’s time, I won’t linger.


	3. Chapter 3

“Hey, mind if I draw you?”

I look up from my drawing—a pretty wicked dragon, if I say so myself.

It’s this girl who sits across from me. This really pretty girl. I don’t remember her name, even though we’ve been sitting across from each other for most of the year.

“Uh, yeah, sure,” I’m staring at her like a deer in headlights, wondering what I’m supposed to do now.

“No, no, just keep drawing,” She says with this weird little half-smile, flapping her hand at me. Her black nail polish is spotless, and her fingers are stained with ink.

“Oh, okay.”

I pick my pencil back up and draw some scales on my dragon, feeling self-conscious and a little shy. This girl is like crazy good at art, I’ve heard her talking with Ms. Anderson about the AP class she’s also taking. She’s already been accepted to some fancy art school I never heard of. She’s usually got earbuds in, so I’ve never tried to talk to her before.

I flip to the next page of my sketchbook and try to think of something else to draw. Sketchbooks are due today—once a month we have to turn in 15 new sketches. There are usually a few stipulations, like you have to have one still life in the mix, or one drawing in three-point perspective. (I’m still not totally clear what that means, but I tried.) Technically we’re supposed to be working on our watercolor projects but pretty much everyone is sketching. I think I’ll be alright—already got 13 down. I might get points taken off, because I think there’s this rule about no copyrighted characters, but whatever, I feel good about a class for once.

I decide to draw this, like, hulked-out wolf for #14, even though canines are a sort of weak point for me. I glance up at the nail polish girl, and she’s scribbling away, frowning in concentration. I watch as a lock of long black hair slips out from behind her ear, and she tucks it back immediately, with an impatient, tic-like motion. She looks back up at me, and I quickly turn my attention back to my own drawing—it's unnerving, being scrutinized like that. 

I try to ignore it, adding some veins to wolf dude’s massive guns. I give him a necklace of skulls—trophies from past kills—and big black claws. Feeling mostly satisfied with him, I glance up again to see the girl paused in contemplation of my portrait. She brushes away some eraser bits, nodding.

“Can I see?”

She looks at me like she forgot I could talk.  Then she passes her sketchbook over, handling it very gently, and I try to do the same.  It’s real nice quality, with a leather cover and a spot for a pencil. I look over her sketch and I can’t believe she cranked this shit out in 10 minutes. It looks just like me, but better—remade in this distinctive style, like I’ve become one of her fantasy characters.

“This is insane, man,” I tell her. “You’re really, really good.”

“Thanks,” she says, taking her book back. “You’re a good subject.”

I don’t know what to say to that, so I blurt out, “What’s your name again?”

She does that half-smile again. “Jane.”

“I’m Jesse,” I say.

“You’re not in class much, Jesse.”

“Yeah, I know.”

She lowers her voice, glancing around. “You wouldn’t have any weed, would you?”

Well, that’s a surprise. “Oh, uh… I don’t have much, but I could get in touch with a guy. How much you thinking?”

I don’t deal anymore, but I’ll hook Jane up.

“Just like a gram,” She whispers.

“Yeah, no problem,” I say. “I can text you when I hear from him. Should be sometime tonight, maybe tomorrow. I could… I mean, if you’re up for it, I’d smoke you out, when school gets over.”

This time, she smiles with both halves. “Okay. We can go to my place—nobody’s there.”

I nod vigorously. “Yeah, okay. I can give you a ride if you want. Meet you in the student lot?”

“Sure,” she says, pushing her chair back. “One sec.”

I watch her take her sketchbook over to the stack at the front of the room, placing it gingerly on top. I wouldn’t want to hand over that sketchbook either. She bends down, pulling her watercolor project out of the 4th period drawer. She’s wearing low-slung jeans and a sweater that looks really soft.

She’s been painting this unicorn, by a pond in a moonlit forest, all gauzy hues like a dream. I don’t even know how you do that with watercolor—my colors all seem to turn into mud. The unicorn’s head is bowed close to the water’s surface, a pearly tear frozen on its way down.

***

I’m kinda giddy all through the rest of the day. Even though Mrs. Livengood has had time to build up her hatred of me from scratch, and seems extra vengeful this year.  She makes me come sit in the front row after she catches me doodling one too many times. I have to haul my shit all the way up there while she and everybody watches in total silence. But it doesn’t bother me like it normally would.

Then in chemistry, miracle of miracles, I think I actually get what’s happening! Mr. White makes eye contact with me now and then while he’s lecturing about quantum numbers and orbital configurations, and I can tell he can tell that I’m getting it. He gives me the smallest hint of a smile and it’s ridiculous how great it makes me feel. I didn’t think I’d ever understand any of this. Say what you want about Mr. White—he’s still a giant prick when he wants to be—but crazy shit happens when he puts his mind to it. I don’t know why he put his mind to this—to _me_. It’s sketchy as hell, but I’ll take it.  I can use all the help I can get.

I go ahead and text Ginny to tell her I'm staying at Badger's.  This way she won't worry if I'm not home 'til like one in the morning.  Allison's kid goes to stay with her dad on Fridays, and Allison almost always spends the night with Ginny.  I know my aunt's in good hands.  I feel good.  It's cool to be doing something different, for once, on a Friday night.

I’m bouncing slightly as I lean against the railing by the student lot, looking around for long black hair. When I see her I try to play it cool like I’ve just been casually standing here. She approaches me with a halfway smile and an ironic little wave.

“Hey,” I call to her.

She comes and stand next to me.  I notice she’s a little bit taller than me.

“Hey,” she says. “You ready to roll?”

“Yeah, totally.”

I start walking over to my car, wishing it was just a little less of a grandma car, and also that I’d thought to get rid of some of the trash in the passenger seat before Jane saw it. “Uh, just one sec. There’s some stuff in the seat.”

I unlock the door and just start throwing shit into the backseat indiscriminately. Jane peeks over my shoulder with a little “Hmmm.”

As we’re pulling out of the lot, I apologize for my car. It’s not her fault her owner is a mess.

“Don’t be sorry,” Jane says. “I like it.”

“Really?”

“I like seeing people’s messes. They tell you a lot.”

“That’s just great,” I say, laughing. “I don’t think I wanna know what this says about me.”

“Well, for one, you’re a smoker,” She says with a nod at the overflowing ashtray.

“Speaking of which, you mind?” I say, holding up a pack. She shakes her head, twisting around to look at the backseat.

“Let’s see… you drink a lot of energy drinks, and you eat a lot of Taco Bell. I’m guessing you don’t own a wallet, since there’s change and receipts all over the place…oh, and remind me never to lend you a book.”

“Yeah, that’s fair.”

“Also, it looks like you live in here.”

“Hmmmm.” I make a so-so gesture, still grinning. I really like her.

“So where am I heading?”

“I’m shit at directions. You got a GPS?”

“The one in my phone. Here, just punch it in,” I fish my phone out of my pocket. “Code’s 0914.”

“What is that, your birthday?” She says, delighted at being handed a new source of unflattering information about me.

“Yeah.”

“That’s like, the worst possible passcode.”

“I don’t really care who looks at it. There's not much on there.”

“Whoa, really?” She sounds shocked. “Okay, you’re gonna turn right at this next light.”

A few seconds later, she sighs, “Wow, you weren’t kidding. There’s nothing on here but music, and—wait, there’s some interesting google searches in your history.”

“Oh, my God.”

“Left up here,” she directs, then bursts into laughter. “Oh my God, ‘sex with traffic cone’?”

“What?!” I glance over at her in horror. “Honest to God, I do not remember typing that.”

I really don’t.

“Just keep going straight. Well, traffic cones aside, you probably have the least interesting phone I’ve ever seen. But that’s pretty interesting of itself. I mean, I get being a social media hermit, but no pictures?”

“There’s some pictures on there.”

“Yeah, like five. Let’s see—you’ve got, what is this, a couple of Cheetos stuck together? What is this even supposed to be?" She pauses for a second. "Aw, cute dog.   Who is this, your mom?”

“She’s my aunt.”

“Ah. Anyway, I can’t believe you don’t have a single picture of yourself on here.”

I shrug. “So, what do you have on your phone, then?”

“Let’s just say, enough to have a passcode you won’t crack on your first guess.”

I give her an incredulous look. “What, like… nudes?”

“You sound scandalized, oh my God! You’d like to see them, wouldn’t you?”

“Um.”

“Have you seriously never taken nudes in your life? Like, ever?”

“Um. No.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah, whatever.”

I’m super uncomfortable but also having a great time. It all balances out. Also, Jane is really cute, and we’re going to her house.

It’s a nice house. A little neglected, the garden beds out front full of weeds, the box stuffed with mail. She pulls her keychain—a black cat—out of her jacket pocket and lets us in. I trail behind her, looking around. I’m standing in a spacious living room, with a squashy-looking wraparound sofa behind a wide, low table. The room looks like it once had some sophisticated interior decorating scheme which is no longer a priority. For example, on the table there’s a wire basket full of these weird felt baubles. It’s exactly the kind of mystifying object one of my mom’s friends would have on her living room table, but it’s being crowded out by normal things—DVDs and books, a pen, a china plate covered in crumbs. There’s a grand piano on the side of the room leading into the hallway, also scattered with papers and things.

I think about what she said about people’s messes. This one is a civilized mess—a kind of quiet trail left behind by people living their lives. I grew up without those kinds of trails. I was always supposed to clear my tracks as I went.

“You can put your stuff wherever. I’m going to get my piece,” Jane calls over her shoulder. Before I can answer, she’s left the room, and I hear her jog up some stairs.

I sit down on the couch, holding my backpack between my knees. I dig out the aspirin bottle I keep my herb in, rolling it around in my hands while I wait. I look around the room—it’s pretty dark, heavy curtains covering all the windows. There are a couple of photos on the mantle, but I can’t make them out from here.

Jane returns with this arty little bubbler, mouth shaped like the head of a serpent, glass swirling with silver and lavender. She’s filled it up with water and put a brand-new copper filter in.

“Wow. This is some fairytale toking, here,” I say.

She shrugs in response. I’m not judging. It really is a beautiful work of craftsmanship. I like that she has all these nice, unique, subtle things. She must spend a lot of time selecting them, piecing her style together.

I carefully pack the bowl and hand the piece back to her, wondering, “You got a light?”

I’m sure I have a lighter in my pocket. She waves me off, though, holding hers up—it’s got a floral pattern on it. I swear, she’s got pretty everything.

I watch mesmerized as she lights it with a smooth flick of her thumb, the flame curling brightly to life in the dim room. She takes a long hit, chest expanding, lashes laying dark on her cheek. Our fingers brush when she passes me the piece, then the lighter.

I pull as hard as I can, feeling unsteady, something drumming a little too sharp inside my veins. The bubbler is so gentle compared to the thick joint smoke I’m used to, I don’t feel like I’m getting any, but I am.

She hits it again, cloaked in hair, and steam unfurls around her. She looks like a sorceress, calling up spirits with her magic pipe.

“This is pretty good shit,” she says, a last smoky tendril flowing from her mouth with the comment. “And it’s cooked.”

I pack another. I feel the high warming up my cells—body parts lighting up like the anatomical models at the Nature Science Center. It hurts—stoned is the only way I can really feel my body, and there’s always a hundred sudden aches. My stomach growls painfully, and I realize I haven’t eaten all day. It’s weird that I’m so messed up sober I don’t even know when I’m hungry.

I can feel the breaths pouring in and out of my lungs like saltwater. Air slides along the surface of my skin, testing the shaky boundary.

I try to right myself, realizing I’m on the edge of slipping from an okay-state to a dangerous one, the kind of state where I don’t know what’ll come out of me. This is what my life is now—okay, and dangerous, and never any warning before one turns to the other. I used to have control. Well, what I had was as far from control as it gets, but I was used to it. I was always underwater, only coming up for air once or twice a day. There was no room there for anything but treading water, gasping air. No room for trying to be a person, trying to do right by people, trying every day to prove he’s wrong about me.

Back then, I always expected the worst. I still expect the worst, but I also hope that good things will happen. That’s what gets me into trouble.

Now, a soft voice close to me: “Hey.” A hand sliding into mine, warm and solid. “You went off somewhere.”

I skid to a halt. Her hand might as well be wrapped around my guts. Soft and gentle but so close, closed around everything. Its warmth winds my whole consciousness around it like moths around a porchlight.

My stomach rumbles out loud, and she laughs. Her eyes are red and bright.

“Me too,” she says. “Why don’t I make some food?”

Food sounds good. I follow her hand to the kitchen.

It feels warmer in here, full of light. There’s a chandelier over a wooden table, lots of big round lightbulbs hovering over the sink and the stove. I watch Jane move around, full of this fluid energy that’s totally alien to me. She cooks like one of those street artists on YouTube, I think. Flinging spray paint, peeling layers, setting them down again—this kind of exact and methodical dance you can never make sense of ‘til you see the finished piece. That’s how her whole self seems to me.

“I love cooking,” she tells me. “Especially high. It’s calming, you know?”

From deep down, I dredge up my voice, “I don’t really cook.”

“I bet your mom cooks you dinner every night,” she says, throwing open the fridge door and disappearing behind it. “I bet she still packs your lunch.”

“No,” I say. “I don’t live with my mom.”

Jane reappears with a green pepper, a tomato, and two canisters of Parmesan cheese bundled in one arm.

“I don’t either,” she says, letting everything drop on the counter. She looks at me for a long minute where I’m sort of hanging back by the cabinets. “Hey, come here.”

“Fill this up for me,” she instructs, putting a pot in my hands. “About two-thirds of the way. Then set it to boil. The big burner.” She turns away, rinses off the pepper and starts chopping it with short, precise strokes.

“Okay,” I agree. I’m so stupidly high, it takes every last drop of my brainpower to boil this water. I feel better, going through one little step at a time.  When it's done, I hang around the stove, watching as the water starts to tremble in the pot.

“When it boils, pour those in,” she points at the box of pasta on the counter. “Then turn the heat down, to like 4 or 5.”

I can do that. I want to thank her, but I’m not sure if that’s a normal thing to say right now.

“You—you live here by yourself?”

She rakes the pile of vegetables with a spatula and they hiss in the pan. “No. Dad lives here too, he’s just never around.”

“I live with my aunt,” I offer. And, for some reason: “She’s dying of cancer.”

“Oh. I’m sorry,” Jane says. She lays the spatula down and turns around to look me in the eye, deadly serious. Then her hand's on the back of my neck and she's kissing me.

I’m too surprised to react, and she pulls away. “Was that okay?”

I nod, and she kisses me again. She’s like a furnace, breathing heat into me. I lick along her lip, touch the tip of my tongue to hers. She wraps her arms around my waist and presses me into her; I hold her hips. She sighs into my mouth, then pushes me back very gently by my shoulders.

She grabs her spatula and points with it: “Water’s boiling.” She jabs at the vegetables, movements swift and jerky. “Just about burned these.

“Sorry, but I’m starved. Warring instincts, like always,” she throws over her shoulder with a flash of a smile. I get what she means.

***

When the food’s done, we both wolf it down ‘til there’s nothing left. I’m so hungry I feel like I could keep eating forever.

I’m finishing a large glass of water when Jane sets a bottle of whiskey down on the table in front of me. She rummages around in the cabinets some more, returning with shot glasses.

“Where’d that come from?”

“It’s his,” she says, no inflection. “There’s tons of it around. He won’t notice.”

I don’t drink a lot. I mean I’ve been drunk before but it’s not my usual thing, especially with my weak stomach. But the food’s evened me out and I’ve got that itch to throw my thoughts down a hole, float so far I forget. She’s got the itch, too. I think hers is probably like mine—it never really stops.

She pours two shots, clinks her glass against mine with a tiny bell sound and a sweet smile. We both knock them back, and she takes another one while I’m still swallowing down the burn.

She leans over me, putting her face close to mine. “Let’s watch a movie, Jesse.”

Yeah, sure—let’s watch a movie.

Her room is right at the top of the stairs. It’s so elegant and neat with its pale purple walls and shimmering black curtains. There’s framed art on her walls, a row of little plants in ceramic bowls across her desk. I can’t believe I’m hanging out with such a put-together person, even one who’s drinking whiskey straight from the bottle.

“Help yourself,” she suggests, setting it down on the bedside table. She crouches down next to her school bag, pulling a laptop out. I take a swig of the whiskey just to have something to do. I’ve only been in a girl’s room once before—well, that I can actually remember.

Jane edges into bed, opening her computer. She pats the covers next to her, “C’mon.”

I sit down cautiously, pulling off my sneakers. They’re streaked in dirt, with God knows what kind of shit caked in the soles, and I feel a little bad setting them down on her gleaming hardwood floor.

“Actually,” she says, “will you turn off the overhead? The switch is over there.”

I find it and turn off the light, leaving only the soft red-orange glow of this orb thing she has on her bedside table, and the bright light from her screen. I scoot over next to her in bed, not quite touching. I can feel her warmth across the gulf; the whole room is warm and melty. I look down at our legs side by side, our socked feet in a row.

She’s pulled up some black-and-white movie. She’s telling me about the director and the year it was made, and I know immediately I will not be able to relate to it. It’s okay, though, because it’s soon apparent we’re not actually going to watch the thing.

She asks me to pass her the whiskey and she takes a big gulp, then gives it to me. I drink and cough. When I recover, her face is close to mine, her fingers stroking my cheek. Strands of her hair tickle over my neck and my arm. She takes the bottle from me and reaches across me to set it down, giving me a faceful of that hair. I smell lavender and weed. She climbs into my lap, and her weight holds me there, in my skin.

It feels good, the way she’s touching me. I think that’s what it is. I can’t make sense of it all—it’s all swirled together like the inside of a blender.

“Is this okay?” she whispers in my ear. Her hand slips under my shirt and along my side. I put my hands on her waist, find skin—creamy smooth. I nod, “Yeah.”

I also say Yeah when she asks if it’s okay to unbutton my jeans. She says she wants to do something for me—she’s already done so much. I tell myself I want her to do it. I should be thanking my lucky stars, I should be over the moon that a girl like Jane wants to give me head. It should be good, but all I feel when she puts her mouth on me is fists in my hair, bitter salt in my throat. Choking, suffocating, spit and snot and tears.

I freeze all over, glue my eyes to the ceiling while she bobs, tentatively, up and down. She must feel it go soft ‘cause she’s hovering over me now, hand on my arm, lips pursed in a frown.

“Am I doing something wrong?”

I cough up syllables like chunks, “I—need—“

I push her off of me and roll out of bed. I’m braced on hands and knees when a spurt of vomit bubbles up onto her cream-colored rug. I clap my hands over my mouth, scrambling to my feet, but I don’t even know where the bathroom is.

Then her hand’s on my arm, I’m stumbling quick as I can down the hallway behind her. The light’s bright and I’m heaving, over and over ‘til I’m spitting straight acid. Any minute I’ll cough up a whole organ, hear it splash in the bowl.

When I finally get a break, I reach blindly for the flush, leaning my forehead on the knuckles of my other hand while I catch my breath. Then I realize someone’s stroking my hair.

Jane’s crouching beside me, murmuring, “Hey, we’ve all been there. I’m not surprised you’re such a lightweight. You’re skin and bones,” she adds, stroking along my spine.

I laugh/sob. My throat feels torn to hell.

“You think you’re finished?” she asks. She's still rubbing my back, and it feels so good it hurts. I can’t believe she’s doing this, even though I ruined everything.

“Yeah,” I croak. I force myself up, angle my head under the tap and rinse out my mouth a few times.

“I think we’ve got an extra toothbrush in the closet, here…yeah, here’s one.” She splits open a package, then hands me the toothbrush and a tube of mint toothpaste. “You do that, and I’ll get you a shirt without throw-up on it.”

There is throw-up on my shirt, and streaks of it on the knees of my jeans. I notice my fly’s undone and feel sick again, fumble it closed with numb fingers.

I make it sound like I’m some blushing virgin, but I'm really not. There are these times when I get like, unbearably horny, and I’ll do just about anything to relieve it. I got into a bunch of fucked up stuff back when I was doing all that crystal. I don’t know what’s wrong with me now, when I'm with someone I actually like.

I brush my teeth twice—it helps. I don’t know what to do with the toothbrush so I put it back in its package.

Jane knocks on the door but comes in without waiting for an answer. She’s holding a black t-shirt and a pair of standard-issue gym shorts from J.P. Wynne.

“They’re mine, but they’re basically gender-neutral, and they’ll fit you. My dad’s clothes would swallow you whole.”

I start pulling off my shirt, too exhausted and numb to feel weird about undressing in front of her. Her clothes are tighter than I normally wear, but they fit fine. They’re clean and comfortable so I’m not about to complain.

Her room is quiet and dark when we return. I notice she’s done a pretty good job cleaning up the rug. There's a glass of water on the table, and a bottle of aspirin that definitely wasn't there earlier.  She gets in bed and opens her laptop back up. I get in next to her, feeling cold, and close my eyes.

I perk back up at a familiar theme—she’s put on Courage the Cowardly Dog. I think I like Jane a lot. Under the covers, I reach for her hand, and she squeezes back. It isn’t the rush of heat that made me desperate earlier, but a muffled heartbeat, fragile and real.

***

I wake up with a start, holding perfectly still as I scan my surroundings—namely, the warm body pressed into my back, and the arm wrapped around my waist. I look down, see black fingernails curled into a black shirt, and remember.

Waiting for my heart rate to return to normal, I try to relax, closing my eyes and breathing in the scents around me. I try to memorize this feeling—bed with someone in it, touching, body heat. I try to reconcile her breaths on my neck, and the tender spot in my chest, and the dire urge to get out of here, now.

I’m just about to extract myself when I hear it—the front door opens and shuts. There’s some shuffling downstairs, then footsteps minutes later, slow and heavy on the stairs. There’s a knock on the door and a man’s voice saying “Jane? You in there?”

I try to wriggle down under the covers but Jane is in the way and the door cracks open before I can do anything. In a second, Jane’s dad zeroes in on me, and we both just stare at each other for several seconds. Then his eyes flick to the near-empty bottle on the nightstand, to my clothes in a jumble on the floor. Abruptly, the door shuts, and I have to start breathing for the second time this morning.

I peel Jane’s arm off me. She’s a seriously deep sleeper—I guess she drank a lot. She looks cute like this, her shiny hair all a mess around her, mouth slightly open and drooling a little bit. I lean down so I can kiss her, just the slightest brush of my lips on hers. I put my puke clothes back on, leaving her things folded on the desk chair.

I don’t want to wake her, but I also don’t wanna leave without a word, especially after she took care of me like that. Just thinking about it makes me want to cry a little. I find a piece of paper in her printer and a mechanical pencil in the jar on her desk. I do a quick sketch of her the way I remember her in class—focused, tucking her hair back. It’s a pathetic attempt compared to her picture of me, but I do my honest best. I look back and forth between my drawing and her sleeping face, trying to work out where I went wrong, what are the little details that make Jane’s face hers.

I can’t get it right, but I hope she’ll appreciate the gesture. I scribble a short apology under the sketch, along with my number.  It's clear to me I'm too fucked up to have a girlfriend, but I hope we can be friends.

I leave the note on her desk and slip out of the door as stealthily as I can. I look up and down the hall, straining my ears, but there are no signs of life. To the right is the bathroom, so the closed door on the left probably leads to Jane’s dad’s room. Praying he’s in there, asleep preferably, I creep down the stairs.

Jane’s piece is still sitting out on the living room table, along with my baggie of weed. Her dad must have seen it, with the front door right there. I’d never have gotten away with that in a million years. I gather my bag and my weed, glancing around in case I forgot anything. I unlock the knob and the bolt as quietly as I can, re-locking the knob from inside before I leave.

As Ol’ Faithful roars to life, I see it’s only 7:44 AM. I can’t wait to be back in my own—well, Ginny’s guest—bed. I don’t feel like I slept at all, and a glance in the rear-view mirror confirms that I look like garbage. A shower, and sweatpants, then bed.

I let myself into Ginny’s and see that she and Allison are both crashed on the couch—Ginny’s lying on her side with her head on a pillow in Allison’s lap, and Allison’s slumped over the arm of the couch, curled around a second pillow. It looks uncomfortable for both of them, but also sweet.

Neither of them ever acknowledge in front of me that they aren’t just “friends”. I wouldn’t mind if they did—I don’t have a problem just because my folks are dicks about it. I’m more grateful than I can say that Allison’s stuck with Ginny through all this. I don’t know what I’d do if I had to handle this alone. I mean, I would, but it’s already so hard. Ginny feels bad all the time now. She tries not to show it but she’s often in a terrible mood, and who can blame her. It’s just good to have an adult around to help.

I lock the door behind me, and turn to see Allison stirring and blinking at me. I mouth ‘Good morning’ with a little salute, heading for the stairs. I like Allison—she’s got a wicked sense of humor, and she really cares about my aunt—but sometimes she makes me nervous. She’s got a daughter who’s 13, and another grown-up kid in college, so I guess she’s wise to things Ginny isn’t. Ginny never had any kids, though she’s told me she always wanted them. Sometimes Allison looks at me just a little too closely, or asks that kind of innocuous question that makes you wonder if she means something else. I try not to interact with her too much one-on-one.

Upstairs, I take a long shower, brush my teeth, and put on some clean clothes. I’m relieved to crawl into bed. Jane’s was nice, but I can’t relax in a bed that smells like anyone but me.

***

It’s afternoon when I venture downstairs for some food. Allison’s left, and Ginny’s awake, looking at her tablet.

“Hey, bud,” she says.

“Hey, Ginny,” I say, coming over to perch on the arm of her chair. She looks a little listless, but calm, which is good.

“How’s Badger?” she asks.

“He’s good. You know Badger,” I say, “Wouldn’t shut the hell up about the new Star Wars movie.”

I kind of resent Badger for being the one of us to graduate high school. Now he spends his days playing Fallout 4 in his mom’s basement, sending me pics of his cat posed with various drug paraphernalia, and putting off community college indefinitely.

I’d die for Badger though, even if he is kind of an idiot. I don’t even know how many nights I’ve spent in that basement, times when things were so bad I thought I’d snap and finally off myself. Then he’d hand me a controller, feed me Cheetos and Red Bull and weed, and keep talking about the dumbest shit all night long so I never had a second to think. I should text him, maybe.

“You and Allison have a nice night?” I ask Ginny.

She nods, “Yeah. We watched Groundhog Day—you know I cry every time.”

“I know,” I say, smiling. “Hey, I’m gonna get some cereal, but I’ll be back.”

I pour myself a huge bowl of Cheerios. It’s been over 24 hours since I ate, not counting regurgitated pasta. I get a glass of orange juice, too—looks like Allison made a grocery store run. God bless her.

I turn the TV on and watch Chopped reruns while I eat my cereal. It makes me wish I had something other than Cheerios to eat, but I settle for a second bowl of Cheerios, plus a second glass of orange juice. I flip through channels while I eat, but everything is boring.

I turn to Ginny. “Hey, you need anything? Allison had to leave for work at like 10, right?”

She shakes her head, “I’m fine for now. Actually, I have something I need to talk to you about.”

I can just tell from her tone that this is about to turn into an awful day. Can’t I get a break, for once—just a little, tiny, momentary fucking break?

All I say is, “Yeah?”

“I’m just going to go ahead and say it—your mother's invited you and me for dinner tonight. I told her we’d be there.”

I don’t want to yell at Ginny. She has cancer and I love her, but I really want to fucking yell.

“You didn’t think—just maybe—you should ask me before you tell her that?”

Ginny takes a deep breath, looking at me gravely.

“I know this is hard for you, Jesse. And I know I shouldn’t be pressuring you like this. You’re an adult, it’s up to you to decide how to deal with family stuff.

“But I’m selfish. I’ve been kept at a distance from my sister for too long. For reasons that made sense, for years, but now…there isn’t much time left. I can’t leave it like this.“

"Then you go. I’m totally in like, full support. I’ll drop you off; you call me whenever you’re ready to leave.”

“Jesse, you’re all she asks about. She’s frantic, wanting to know if you’re alright, if you’re using, if you’re hanging around dangerous people. Of course you and I know how well you’ve recovered. I’m proud of you, Jesse, I know it hasn’t been easy. But your mom doesn’t know, because you won’t talk to her.”

“She won’t listen, Ginny!” I’m starting to breathe too fast, not ready to deal with any of this. “She never fucking listens!”

Ginny has that look of pain again. I’ve been seeing it more and more every day, and I fucking hate it.

“I think she’s ready to listen,” she says. “And if you don’t give her the chance—you’ll never know what you’re losing until it’s gone.”

She’s wrong, so wrong I want to cry and scream. But I already know I’ll go have fucking dinner. And I already know it’ll destroy me.

***

Dinner’s at 7. I tell her I’ll go, but I barely speak for the rest of the day. She probably thinks I’m trying to punish her on purpose, but I’m not. I really can’t say more than a couple words at a time, and once that’s done there’s no brain left to figure out if they make sense or not. My body has shut down all but essential functions. It’s getting ready to protect the parts of me I can’t live without, and it’s prepared to sacrifice anything else it needs to.

It’s been—what, five months since I went home? No, six. I haven’t been back since the night Mom carted me off to the hospital.

I was a real mess, I’ll give her that. It was before Ginny’s diagnosis, and I’d got to the point where I didn’t much care if my lifestyle killed me. I’d been taking Adderall on prescription since the third grade and even on the max dose, it was hardly enough to get me out of bed anymore. I started getting meth through Emilio and I was spending most of my allowance on it and other stuff so I didn’t have any money left over for gas. I started dealing to kids at school to make enough cash to get by. I was snorting that shit off the backs of textbooks in the bathroom. The last time I got suspended, it wasn’t even my weed—I walked in on some guys lighting up in the bathroom and accepted a quick toke from them. Good thing the school cop didn’t know about the teenth of crystal meth I was getting ready to bust out any second.

I’ve had trouble sleeping and eating forever, but it had been getting worse and worse, until I’d mostly given up both. I was living on Adderall and meth, Vicodin and codeine and Xanax and whatever I could get my hands on.

Dad kept threatening he’d have me thrown in the nuthouse if I didn’t tone my shit down. I’d just laugh until he made me stop. At the clinic they told us we had a disease, but I knew they were wrong. I’d be sick if I didn’t need drugs. I’d be sick if I wasn’t willing to tear my body to shreds so someone might notice what was happening to me.

Mom noticed. She noticed when I came home barely able to stand—it’s a damn miracle how I avoided a wreck, driving in that state—dehydrated, half-starved. I hadn’t slept for more than an hour or two at a time for almost a week. Until then, I’d been so good at hiding from her—like Alice in Wonderland, I took a little of this and a little of that, made myself the right size for her. But I miscalculated—took a little too much codeine trying to counteract the jitters, and honestly, I was in trouble before that.

The room was swimming around, I couldn’t hear out of one of my ears. I remember trying to make conversation at the dinner table, everybody giving me looks as I laboriously ate peas, one at a time. Suddenly I was hurling whole peas, Mountain Dew and stomach acid straight into my spaghetti. I remember Mom pushing up my sleeve looking for needle marks, finding shit Dad left on me. Then Mom was crying and screaming at me for being a drug addict, and Dad was shouting at me for being a drug addict and for scaring my mother. I put my head down on the table and took a little nap while they argued.

When I came to Mom was crying into the phone, and next thing I knew I was being buckled into the passenger seat of her car, wheeled into the emergency room, poked and prodded and stuck with things while the bright lights shined down on me. Turns out I could have died because the electrolytes were so fucked up in my body. My heart could have just stopped.

I spent a week in the hospital before I got sent the clinic. It was alright there. Peaceful and quiet. The therapy sessions were mostly bullshit, but sometimes we got to do stuff like cook or make collages or plant flowers. I ate a regular diet for the first time in years, which was hell at first but got easier after the first week. Soon I was gladly eating as much as they’d feed me. I slept, too—straight through the night, without nightmares. I don’t know if it was the Seroquel or the secure environment but either way, I was nodding off by 10 on the regular. They also put me on a mood stabilizer but it made me break out in a gross rash all over. They took me off that and put me on lithium instead, which I’m technically still prescribed but I never take ‘cause it makes me sick.

Mom came and visited a few times and it was always awful. Ginny visited every week and it was nice except for the time when I found out about the cancer in her brain. Dad came with Mom once, and I don’t remember it except that I was itchy and weird for the rest of the day.

So yeah, ever since Allison picked me up and gave me a ride to my car, I’ve kept away from that hellhole. Even though I had no clothes to wear but what Mom packed in a duffel bag and brought to the clinic, plus some stuff I’d had floating around in the car. Badger gave me some hand-me-downs from his 14-year-old brother—it’s embarrassing as hell, but Chase pretty much dresses the same as me. Anyway, everyone in Badger’s family is huge.

It’s Chase’s flannel button-down and khakis I throw on at my aunt’s request. She wears her most presentable sweats and bandana, and we’re in the car by 6:36 PM.

I probably shouldn’t be driving. I didn’t think I could feel dread but I do, and it’s tunneling my vision down to a point. One part of my brain is screaming at me to do literally anything to avoid this. Swerve into oncoming traffic, drive straight out of town…or just, you know, turn around and go home. The bigger half of me says there’s no choice, there was never any choice and I was stupid for thinking there could be. I'm supposed to be in control of this vehicle, but I’m not.

We don’t talk at all on the way over, but Ginny pipes up as we’re pulling into the driveway, right behind Dad’s car.

“Thank you for doing this, sweetheart. It’s gonna be just fine, I promise.”

How are people always _promising_ , and _guaranteeing_ , and saying shit when they don’t know anything?

 _Tell her_ , says that first voice. _Right now, tell her everything. She wouldn’t let you go in there if she knew._

But another voice says _She won’t believe you_. And another voice says _She’ll hate you_. And another voice tells me I’ll hurt her, I’ll shatter her world, I’ll steal her family from her in the last months of her life.

 _What about me?_ The first voice screams back, standing up like a lone survivor in my wrecked head. _What about my pain? What about my world, which was broken into pieces? Shouldn’t I have had a family I could trust, shouldn’t I have felt safe in my own home?!_

But I’ve always been shattered. It’s never mattered what I felt or thought or wanted. I’ve never been loved or trusted, and I’ve never been able to give those things either. Ginny tried to love me and look where it got her. She’s going to die.

We’re just in time. They’re so glad we could make it. Baked chicken, potatoes and green beans—it’s great, Mom. Hey little man, how’s it going? Wait, a robot? Are you messing with me? That’s wicked, you gotta show me after dinner.

School is going just great. Yes, actually I have a tutor now. I see him twice a week, I’ve made tons of progress. Yes, I’m eating three meals a day, drinking 64 ounces of water, and I’ve really cut down on the amphetamines.

Uh, oops.

I haven’t looked at him all through dinner, but just like that, he’s got my eye, like a dog brought to heel with a thought. One look and the blood drains out of me, puddles in the carpet.

“We’re so proud of our Jake,” he says. “On his latest progress report, his teacher said he’s already reading at an 8th grade level. A 3rd grader, can you believe it?”

He looks me straight in the eye as he ruffles a hand through Jake’s hair, then slides it down to slowly squeeze his shoulder.

I’m going to throw up. I’m bleeding, everywhere. Why can’t they see it? How does he do this in plain fucking sight and no one sees?

Mom is gushing on about Jake’s little boy achievements. Jenny croaks in approval now and then, and I stare at my plate. I have to get him out of here. Somehow, I have to take him, drive him far far away. How will I do it? How can I save him?

Everyone’s plates are clear but mine. I’ve probably managed three bites of each thing on my plate. I just keep chewing and chewing and chewing this chicken but it won’t go down. I gulp water, force it down, and clumsily excuse myself, chair screeching back.

I lock myself into the bathroom at the end of the hall. I splash water on my face—my hands are shaking madly and water sprays everywhere.

I look long and hard at myself in the mirror. I’m not bleeding. No one is bleeding, there’s no blood in sight. Soon this will be over, I’ll go back to Ginny’s where I can think this through logically, where I won’t feel like a pig for the slaughter.

I pat down my face with a hand towel, run a hand through my hair. I breathe carefully in and out through my nose like I learned in the clinic. I step out of the bathroom, and Dad’s right there, waiting for me.

I can’t speak. His hand is on my shoulder, pushing me smoothly into the shadows of my bedroom doorway.

“Your aunt is very tired,” he says in a low voice. “It’s late, and she’s very ill, and your mother has already made up the guest room for her.

“You’re going to sit down and finish your dinner, and you’re going to tell your aunt you’d like to stay here tonight. You’re going to be in bed, lights out, by 10:30.”

“The hell I am,” I snarl. This new voice, wherever it came from, is fighting to the death. “You can’t keep me here, you sick fuck. I’ll tell Mom, I’ll tell them all—“

My head hits the wall, my breath leaves me in a grunt. My feet scrabble for purchase. I’m pinned, bodily lifted an inch or so off the ground, held here with the weight of his body. I try to kick but he pins my legs with one of his. He crushes me.

I’m a legal adult. I shouldn’t have to take this anymore, but I still only weigh like 110 pounds. I’m a ragdoll he can throw around whenever he wants. Play with, groom, dress and undress. He’s written his name on every inch of me, and he’s not just going to let me go.

I thought I’d had the upper hand, finally, that the price of my silence was equal to the price of my freedom. Of course not. I was so fucking stupid, like always. He always has another piece to play. Otherwise this game would have ended long ago.

He stares dead in my eyes while he holds me here, grinding me into the wall. He waits for me to drop my gaze in surrender, like a thousand times before. He steps away and I crumple to the floor.

“Two minutes,” he says, and leaves.

I stand, slowly. I walk on shaking legs to the dining room. I sit down, and eat my dinner. I tell my aunt I’d like to stay here tonight, and she agrees. I’m in bed by 10:30—lights out.

***

In the morning, like a thousand mornings, Mom raps on my door.

“Breakfast in twenty minutes,” she calls.

I don’t want breakfast. I want to crawl under the bed and die there like an insect. But I get out of bed and go to the bathroom. I piss and I take a quick shower, not looking at my body. I dress in a thermal shirt, hoodie and jeans I haven’t seen in six months. I missed them—nice to be in clothes that weren’t handed down.

Mom, Ginny and Jake are already sitting at the table. Mom and Ginny are speaking intently while Mom doles out eggs, cantaloupe and Pepperidge Farm cinnamon toast. I don’t bother tuning in unless I’m spoken to. I put food in my mouth, chew, and swallow, and you’d never know I can’t taste a thing.

Wait—Ginny asked how I slept. I say fine. How did she sleep? She looks well-rested, I think, or as rested as she can be. Like a weight’s been lifted off her shoulders, at least temporarily.

Funny how that works—how I carry these weights for them, and they don’t even know.

We’ll leave after breakfast. That was the deal. There’s school tomorrow, work, whatever Mom does—lives that don’t involve each other. Jake politely answers my questions about the robotics stuff he’s doing, the musical instrument he’s playing, the ribbons he won in chess club. This kid is eight years old and he ought to have a damn secretary to keep up with his schedule. He’s eight years old and he already knows to approach me with caution—I’m the bad example, the lesson learned. I’m the pressure relief valve that lets Dad keep treating Mom and Jake and everybody else like people. I’m here to give the monster a workout so he can act like a person the rest of the time.

Who knows how long I’ve held him off this time. We’ll see, I guess.


End file.
